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The Eel

The Eel

Drama · Crime · 1997

A businessman kills his adulterous wife and is sent to prison. After his release, he opens a barbershop and meets new people, talking to almost no one except for an eel he befriended while in prison.

Movie details

The Eel

1997 Drama · Crime 1h 57m

Critical arithmetic

The consensus, allegedly.

IMDb

7.3 / 10

6.5K votes

Rotten Tomatoes

83 %

Tomatometer

Metacritic

81 / 100

Metascore

TMDB

6.9 / 10

Community rating

External scores via OMDb · CC BY-NC 4.0. Values normalized for display; availability varies by title.

A businessman kills his adulterous wife and is sent to prison. After his release, he opens a barbershop and meets new people, talking to almost no one except for an eel he befriended while in prison.

CriticWise case file

What this film says about your taste.

Not a recommendation score. A measure of how closely the film’s taste signals resemble yours.

The archetype split

Who fights over The Eel?

The split comes from the same five-axis model used by the test, not audience ratings or review sentiment.

Taste neighbourhood

Nearby on the taste map.

TMDB supplies the candidates. CriticWise reorders them by craft, strangeness, prestige, emotion, and pace.

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True Believer

True Believer

Crime · 1989

Eddie Dodd is a burnt out former civil rights lawyer who now specializes in defending drug dealers. Roger Baron, newly graduated from law school, has followed Eddie's great cases and now wants to learn at his feet. With Roger's idealistic prodding, Eddie reluctantly takes on a case of a young Korean man who, according to his mother, has been in jail for eight years for a murder he didn't commit.

Panic

Panic

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Alex is going through a midlife crisis and it has become a very difficult time for him. His marriage is struggling, he's worried about his son, and his job of killing people for his family has become the most stressful part of his life. He seeks the help of a therapist and meets a woman in the waiting room that he connects with.

Salvable

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Above the Rim

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Where it lives

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Names above the title

The people responsible.

Directed by

Shōhei Imamura

Written by

Shōhei Imamura · Motofumi Tomikawa · Daisuke Tengan

Koji Yakusho

Koji Yakusho

Takuro Yamashita

Misa Shimizu

Misa Shimizu

Keiko Hattori

Akira Emoto

Akira Emoto

Tamotsu Takasaki

Fujio Tokita

Fujio Tokita

Jiro Nakajima

Mitsuko Baisho

Mitsuko Baisho

Misako Nakajima

Show Aikawa

Show Aikawa

Yuji Nozawa

Ken Kobayashi

Ken Kobayashi

Masaki Saito

Court is in session

Put The Eel on trial.

Two incompatible taste archetypes. One film. Read the arguments, then issue a completely binding cultural ruling.

The defence The Auteur Devotee

“Ambition earns the room.”

The film reaches for consequence and scale, accepting the risk of seriousness instead of shrinking from it.

The prosecution The Popcorn Loyalist

“Importance has entered the chat.”

The production keeps announcing its significance, as though awards-season posture were proof of insight.