Tokyo Gore Police
I can say that
in Tokyo Gore Police, I have seen the future. Not because the film is set in the future and
it portrays an accurate picture of where Japan is heading socially. Although, by my estimations
it kinda does that too. But what I have seen is a bright new dawn of
exploitation features and that Tokyo Gore Police is a turning point
milestone revolution rebirth reaching a new plateau that hopefully won’t sprain
its ankle doing all those things. It
sure as shit sprained my mind watching it.
In a good way.
This is movie
is like an ultraviolent satire of Robocop, which was an ultraviolent
satire to start with. It’s from “the
people who brought” us Machine Girl.
I used to be kinda weary about these “from
the people who brought you” credentials.
Just tell me who was involved and in what capacity on both films. Is it the same director? Writers? Waterboy? Well, it seems this
studio, Tokyo Shock, is the Judd Apatow of movies
that actually entertain me. They’re
definitely delivering the same thrills and production values as Machine Girl,
but it’s like they read my mind in terms of criticisms about the slow parts in Machine
Girl and Tokyo Gore Police just keeps the ridiculousness and gore
flowing non-stop. In fact, as a trash
auteur, this movie was like a mental game of chess for me. In every scene they kinda
advanced the ridiculousness and by the end of each scene I was beaten in terms
of not being able to think of a way to make it any more absurd than it actually
was.
I think the sex
club scene was the highlight of the movie.
But man, that passage of the film has some pretty stiff competition in
the cray-zee department. I really have no idea how these guys are
going to top this film. It was nice to
see this movie in the cinema. I realize it
got released on DVD here in North America a few days ago, but hey, I was kinda tearing around my place like Bruce Springsteen in the
song Dancing In The Dark, it’s only minus 25 degrees outside and it’s nice to
wear pants for something other than work.
So I went out and caught this baby on the big screen. The chick in the cinema next to me spent
pretty much the whole movie hiding her face in her hands, but laughing while
shrieking in disbelief. It’s nice when a
ridiculous passage of a film ends everybody claps like at acts in a stage
show. It was a real old fashioned good
time at the movies where I felt like I was really part of an experience and not
just trying see the screen around the dude in front of
me’s hair.
Typically when
I watch cheesy Asian movies like this, I go with the dub. In general I have a policy that dictates
subtitles, but for this kind of material I find the cheesy voice acting in the
English dub usually adds a bit more comic value. But since I was watching this in the cinema I
couldn’t make such demands and watched in its native Japanese with English
subtitles.
For the most
part I have a really hard time judging acting in Asian language movies. I can tell a bad motherfucker like Chow Yun Phat has screen presence, and
I can appreciate Jet Li’s amazing physical abilities and Gong Li’s
sexiness. But since I don’t speak any
Asian language, I really can’t judge their line readings and delivery or even
if they’re saying anything that remotely matches the subtitles. With European languages I feel I’m at least
working with the familiar even if I don’t speak Italian or whatever I can still
pick out some words with Latin roots and read the actors’ intonation. I find Asian languages have a different pitch
code as to what tone implies what feeling, so I never really comment on the
acting in Asian language movies. But I
feel I can safely say the acting in this appropriately crappy and bad enough to
pierce the language barrier. I would
tend to think no respectable actor would want to be in this sort of movie, but
after Jurgen Prochnow
showed up in an Uwe Boll movie quoting Scarface
and blasting zombies, all bets are off.
They’ve clearly
blown most of their budget on making exploding and mutilated body parts, which
I think was a good move. I hope this
film’s success will also help them maybe to be able to afford better action
choreography and funnier sets in the future.
Not that I have a problem with abandoned warehouses.
Anyway, I don’t
want to just recount every scene in this amazing movie, so I’ll keep it short
and sweet. If you’ve ever wanted to see
a movie where a guy makes a gun that shoots Fuck-You’s and somebody finds a way to deflect the Fuck-You’s back at him resulting in death by Fuck-You, then this
is the film for you. Or
if you like Robocop and would like to see a Japanese version.
I give this
film the highest possible honour.
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marathon of deceit, betrayal, revenge, and clusterfuckbackstabs.