Bakuretsu toshi

I'd like to start this comment section by first off saying I do enjoy and appreciate to a certain extent the cinematic agenda of "cyberpunk cinema". I really enjoyed Fukui's "Rubber's Lover" and I appreciate the aesthetic genius of films like "Tetsuo", "Pinocchio 964", even the recent "Bottled Fools". But with that said and done, that is basically what all these films are, simply aesthetically pleasing. That statement reaches its height with this earlier film called Burst City by cyberpunk pioneer Sogo Ishii. With so clever, innovative and kinetic cinematography Ishii just creates a clash between Mad Max and Rock n Roll High School. There is no substance to this style, not even some of the obscure images that one may be used to from seeing Tsukamoto's earlier films. And actually in some ways, Burst City's style obstructs the viewer from any type of cohesion so what ensues is total anarchy. I was really excited about seeing this early film from Ishii too because I first really enjoyed the psychological thriller "Angel Dust" and then came to enjoy his return to form in "Dead End Run" but "Burst City" turned out to be a major disappointment.

The premise of the story is vague and there seems to be a couple different plot lines. First, a pimp and one of his girls are trying to get out of the slums. He pimps her out to a crime boss whose into S&M. That boss and his syndicate are trying to destroy the slums in a crooked construction scheme. For labor, the syndicate enslaves the city's population of mentally disabled homeless. Meanwhile, two rival gangs/bands drag race, fight, and crash each other's gigs to dominate the punk rock scene. The rivals are also fighting against the police because, well, you know, it's the police.

Burst City uses a lot of shaky hand-held camera-work. Not because they were going for some aesthetic effect but because it's cheap. In much the same way, there is an overall lack of lighting. Burst City jumps between plot lines and characters spending little time establishing either. The combination results in a movie that has the potential to be very confusing, if not incoherent.

In all honesty, I've seen this one and a half times. A few years ago, I attempted to watch it but I was too sleepy. I couldn't concentrate. This time I watched it on a flight from Baton Rouge to Lincoln. Unfortunately, I was a little sleepy this time too. I zoned out for just a minute and when I zoned back in, some character (I didn't know who) was killed (somehow) by someone (probably the syndicate) and, in response, the two rival gangs started fighting each other. The character was never mentioned again so I don't think it was that important.

"80's Japanese Sci-fi Punk Rock Musical, need I say more?" I wanted that to be my bottom line but I thought it might be a little misleading. Sometimes it can be fun to get together with some friends, get some pizza, and put on a low budget movie. But when you do that, you ought to choose a movie that is easy to watch. After all, the focus is hanging out with friends. This won't work if you try it with Burst City. It may just be a little too much to simply throw on the TV. That said, I give it a 4.5/5 because of its spirit.

From what I've read, Burst City was created by a couple punk bands who wanted to put out a movie featuring their music. The film's potential shortcomings are necessary evils when you consider this motivation. They didn't have the budget for smooth sophisticated cinematography or lighting but so what? They wanted to make a movie and they did it. It also helps that the music is awesome.

After watching this movie, I got into a punk rock mood so I re-watched the big budget, mainstream, Brass Knuckle Boys which is about a punk band from the 80's reuniting and rediscovering punk. Speaking of Brass Knuckle Boys, looking over my posts, it seems I never wrote a review about it. I will post that soon as well. Anyway, I am working on a post the compares and contrasts the depiction of punk rock in Burst City and Brass Knuckle Boys. In the meantime, I would recommend Burst City particularly if you are a fan of punk rock; it is a cool movie.

I went into Burst City not knowing what it was. I hadn't seen footage or read much about it, and I hadn't seen any of Sogo Ishii's other films, to get a sense of the director. But from a glance at some of the director's filmography, posters and screenshots I may have seen out in the ether, I could tell there was a punk aesthetic in some of his films, that I personally found immensely intriguing, and there's a few of his films that I know by name and by poster art if nothing else and have long desired to see. I guess the reason I went this long without watching any of his films, was because I couldn't find any of them in any kind of half-decent quality.

Burst City it turns out, is some kind of insane 1980s Japanese punk rock concept album music video. Like "Tommy", but with ridiculous teenage Japanese punk songs with lyrics that make no sense, directed by way of a young Shin'ya Tsukamoto. What skeleton of a plot there is, you might sometimes sense occasionally, like an underdeveloped V-cinema Takashi Miike dystopian Mad Max sci-fi script, bobbing just below the surface, drowning under the enormity of the film's aesthetic. Basically, the story of the film, or the "concept" in the sense of the concept album music video, boils down to being about youth rebelling against "the man". But when Burst City is at its best is when it blocks out all pretence of a plot and with seeming effortlessness, becomes pure aesthetic perfection.

The first scene of Burst City, the first song on the album, which has no lyrics and sets the mood for the album to come, would be, from a directorial perspective, a masterfully brilliant opening to any film with a genuine narrative script that might be able to accommodate such an opening. Many of the other scenes in Burst City, too, feel like they could make really heart-pumping moments in a more conventional film. But the fact is that they're all together in this one nonsensical film, which may make the whole thing feel somewhat hollow in the end - like there's no substance here - OR it could be seen as freeing the film up from slavish adherence to a narrative that would diminish its aesthetic credibility.

The best comparison for Burst City would be another 80s cult Japanese musical film that was curated out of obscurity recently, "The Legend of the Stardust Brothers" released on blu-ray by Third Window Films. Another film that's more a full album music video than a narrative feature film, Legend of the Stardust Brothers, like Burst City, is also an extremely campy strange cultural artifact - or time capsule - of a film. I think the main difference is, where Stardust Brothers' camp is just funny, Burst City's camp, while undoubtedly funny, is, to be honest, kind of pretty cool at the same time. Kind of satisfying. How liberating it would be to be a ridiculous Japanese punk in the 80s. I'm kind of really really endeared to this aesthetic.

The Arrow blu-ray release, I have no doubt, presents this film looking true to how it was intended, and shown in theatres. Given the limitations of the source material, the blu-ray could frankly have been an upscaled DVD a lot of the time, and I probably wouldn't notice the difference, but I am confident nonetheless that this represents an enormous upgrade over any previous home release this film may have had. This is a hell of a gritty film all shot handheld at night in high-ISO high-noise super-grainy 16mm film, and watching it in any kind of digitally over-compressed, bad transfer, or compromised way, would murky and confuse the aesthetic and greatly diminish the experience, so I think it's fantastic that Arrow is offering this restored version.

The allure of discovering Sogo Ishii's punk rock aesthetic on blu-ray persuaded me to blind-buy the Arrow blu-ray when it was announced, but I wasn't in a hurry to watch it, as I had no particular expectation for it. As it turns out, this is the surprise blu-ray release of the year, and the best film I've newly discovered in some time. I hope some of Ishii's other films like Crazy Thunder Road and Electric Dragon 80,000V get similar releases soon.

Roger Ebert once said of the 1995 film Fallen Angels by Wong Kar-Wai "It will appeal to the kinds of people you see in the Japanese animation section of the video store, with their sleeves cut off so you can see their tattoos. And to those who subscribe to more than three film magazines. And to members of garage bands. And to art students." Well, none of those examples describes me exactly, but maybe I would fit right in with the types of people Ebert was talking about, because Fallen Angels is one of my most beloved movies. I wonder how he'd describe the hypothetical target audience for this film...

I have seen a lot of Japanese Movies, and this must have been one of the worst i have seen in all those years. The Punk Music might be appealing to some people, but the rest of the film is awful. The so called Camera-work looks like they just ran around with the Cam, the "violent" scenes some People liked are cut fast and filmed with an extremely unsteady Camera so you don't see anything at all. Weird Gangs fighting each other makes it looks like an extremely cheap "The Riffs" aka "Bronx Warriors" RipOff, which was originally released 1982 as well. All in all the movie just was a mix of pointless and bad fights, mixed with punk music... Even for a giant Musicvideo the Visuals are extremely bad. Don't let yourself fool you by People how compare this to work by Miike or Kitano, because even their worst movies look like Oscar-winners compared to this waste of material.

A shame few will get the chance to see this movie. It was suggested to me as a Japanese Death Race 2000. Oh, but it is so much more. A dystopian future against a backdrop of angry Japanese punk rock. Burst City is a raw look at an overamped society with its frantic, hyper camera work and loud brash music. As a fictional peek into punk rock, Burst City is still leaps and bounds above any other attempts. Well worth the look. Be prepared to search, however, and I don't believe there is a subtitled or dubbed version in existence. This is a shame as the film deserves greater exposure.