A Living Promise / Jinsei no Yakusoku

Takenouchi Yutaka has gone from taxi driver to lawyer and now to the CEO of an IT company who fired his founding partner of the company and does not take no for an answer from his subordinates.

He receives a lot of calls from his ex partner Kouhei and he finally heads to Kouhei's place only to find that Kouhei had just died leaving a daughter behind.

At this time I am thinking this is a pretty straightforward rich businessman learns to be more human by coming to the countryside movie.

The good thing is they don't try to overexplain but it seems like the movie is not so concerned with dwelling on the company problems of the IT CEO...

.. and more with the problems of the small fishing town of Shin Minato losing their festival float.

Sen Taxi is told the importance of the festival float is to connect everything; people, the sea, etc.

And the beautiful climax is just about that. No words need to be spoken save for the cheers when pushing/pulling the floats but A Living Promise just ties it together in such a beautiful way.

This is one of those lots of famous people doing small parts movie and I think a lot of them did it for the story.

The dilemma I am facing is whether a pretty standard first half make up for an absolutely beautiful second half and push it towards must watch level?

Fuck yeah its a must watch, cause the climax scene is too good and the story just had to speed through the first half to set everything up. It had me thinking Sen Taxi is a pretty good actor.

I kind of feel A Living Promise is the other side of the coin to Dear Doctor. They are both about small towns and how people relate and need one another except it is more positive. A Living Promise has not been subbed yet but in the meantime, I recommend Dear Doctor if you haven't seen it.