Tôkyô Zankoku Keisatsu |
USA / Japan • 2008 • 110m •
   • Directed by: Yoshihiro Nishimura. • Starring: Eihi Shiina, Itsuji Itao, Yukihide Benny, Jiji Bû, Ikuko Sawada, Cay Izumi, Mame Yamada, Ayano Yamamoto, Akane Akanezawa, Tsugumi Nagasawa, Maiko Asano, Daisuke Matsuki, Naofumi Murata. • Music by: Kou Nakagawa.     In future Tokyo, the police have been privatized and bitter self-mutilation has become so casual that advertising is often specially geared to the "cutter" demographic. Ruka, samurai-sword-wielding cop on a mission to avenge her father's assassination, is a member of a squad whose mission it is to destroy homicidal mutant humans known as "engineers" possessing the ability to transform any injury to a weapon in and of itself.
|
Trailers:
| Length: | Languages: | Subtitles: |
Review:
Imagine a version of Power Rangers where sexual organs turn into weapons and you don't go five minutes without a rain of arterial spray. The story's neither here nor there; more than anything, the movie's a stylistic exercise, a braindead, gaudy amalgamation of body horror, 80s splatter, art-house flirtations, freaky no-wave art rock, an expressionistic, Argento-like flair for lighting, and I guess even a little satire. It's heavyhanded, but it is pretty funny, and rips into everything from hipsters, to consumerism, to the military industrial complex. Pastel colored razor blades are marketed to children as a "cute" way to cut yourself. Self-obsessed fetish clubgoers cheer in awe at Josef Mengele-worthy displays of human experimentation. etc. etc. Obviously a lot of cues were taken from Robocop and expanded on.
And unlike the Z-est grade of this new wave of jap gore movies, there's very little CGI--when there is, it's innocuous and pretty amusingconvincing, or a combination of the the two. In other words, they actually put some love and creativity into this freakshow, like in the old days.
Don't even compare this to the recent retro grindhouse boom in the states, they're worlds apart. While Tarantino and Rodriguez pay tribute to 70s sleaze with very mixed, usually unsuccessful results, movies like this take the kind of artistic chances that made the 70s worth paying tribute to. Tokyo Gore Police was marketed as a slick, by-the-numbers action movie with a B movie flavor, and so the people who tend to see that kind of stuff saw it. What they got was a full-fledged dirty exploitation flick with an experimental streak, and so a lot of them felt alienated. Oh well. Ironically, this sort of thing is the perfect antithesis to the sort of mediocre, soulless, factory-assembled flick the DVD cover would lead you to believe it is.
Review by eatmyfuc
from the Internet Movie Database.
Movie Database