Bullet Ballet

It's not that no one else does what Shinya Tsukamoto does, but that when he's at his best, nobody does it better. All the common staples of his style are here: loose, frenetic camerawork; sharp editing to produce rapid successions of imagery; industrial music. Add to this the black and white presentation of a very independent production, and the stage is set.

If Tsukamoto's boorishly over the top sequels to 'Tetsuo: The iron man' proved anything, it's that the filmmaker does his best work when he begins with the simplest idea and develops his story from there. In the case of 'Bullet ballet,' that means a man's obsession with obtaining a gun following his partner's suicide. From that premise comes a movie about a person living on the edge, and accidentally becoming involved in still more seedy matters in the process. By all means, it's a concept with great potential. I'm not convinced that the result here was entirely successful, but it's duly engaging, and compelling enough to mostly hold our attention.

Tsukamoto is a capable actor, and inhabits the lead role with strong range and nuance to realize the protagonist's anguished desperation. The writing of other characters is less discrete, but the rest of the cast are suitable nonetheless. I think each individual scene is composed and executed very well, with varying moods and temperaments across them all. I'm less enthused about the overall narrative, as it seems too disordered and busy for its own good. There are sound ideas here, both the central focus and the misadventures that the main character becomes involved in. But I feel like 'Bullet ballet' would be so much better if it were more concentrated on protagonist Goda and his flailing effort to acquire a weapon and end his own life. The more that the film spins out to weave in the thread of gang warfare, the thinner and weaker it becomes, especially since the two elements as they are written fail to converge with the cohesiveness they could have. The movie is full of solid possibility, but the rendition of the tale that we get just doesn't quite cut it.

With that said, I don't think this is bad. In fact, I'm inclined to say it starts out very strong, and even as the component parts fail to wholly integrate, I think the ending is pretty well done, too. The real issue is a floundering midsection that's a little all over the place, and just not tightly centered enough to totally work. More time spent developing the screenplay would have gone a long way. Still - while in part I wonder if I'm not being too kind as it is, more so than not I liked 'Bullet ballet.' It's far from perfect, but tells an engrossing story while refraining from the utmost bombast that bring down some of Tsukamoto's other pictures. This isn't necessarily a movie for someone who doesn't already appreciate the filmmaker's style, but for anyone open to it, it's a fair watch. Don't go out of your way, and keep the indelicacies firmly in mind, but if you happen to come across 'Bullet ballet,' it's not a bad way to spend 85 minutes.

Shinya Tsukamoto's unique vision is fairly amazing. I thought the better known "A Snake Of June" was brilliant and provocative, but this film is also, even though they are hardly about the same thing. Mr. Tsukamoto, who produced, edited, wrote and directed this, also stars in it as Goda, a commericals director whose girlfriend has killed herself with a gun. Goda's life and reason unravels, and he obsesses with finding a gun. He falls in with a gang of disenfranchised youth in Tokyo's Shibuya (the Harajuku district, which is next to Shibuya in Tokyo, is a prime place for these young people still) and gets involved in a gang fight as well as other violence. The film was shot in black and white, which was an excellent idea, since the film is too stark to be in color. This is not for casual film goers, but fans of Tarantino and Darren Aronofsky's work will like this. Mr. Tsukamoto has created a film about the lure of non-redemption and brilliant shoots it almost documentary style. The other characters, especially the brooding model like Kirina Miao as Chisato, are also good, but this is Mr. Tsukamoto's film. Obtain the DVD, which has an interview with him taken years later in which he answers certain questions about the film. It is a candid view of his process and idea. This movie is very in your face and its effectiveness in spreading the message of violence and hopelessness is fascinating. I highly recommend it.

This movie is rather underrated i feel.

This is the third movie i've seen by the director, the first being Snake of June and the second being Tetsuo: The Iron Man.

I'd say this film is better than those two films, although i very much like those two films i feel this one blows them out of the water in a lot of respects.

It's a much darker vision than Tetsuo, it's really full of dread this film. So that may put some off but it's a really interesting film and is amazingly directed and for the most part i feel it's really well acted.

For me this movie is like the two other Shinya Tsukamoto films i've seen mixed with Ichi The Killer sort of things. There are a lot of things in here that it seems Miike Takashi knowingly used in Ichi The Killer, of which Shinya Tsukamoto stars.

Yeah, a confusing and disjointed film and a film of two or maybe even three parts but a really interesting watch and the context and the interaction of the characters is excellent.

I'd say this film is very worth seeing indeed.

First off, those expecting the David Lynch-on-Angel Dust style of the 1st Tetsuo movie and Tokyo Fist will probably be disappointed. Like Tokyo Fist, this is Shinya Tsukamoto at his most personal and heartbreaking. I saw this film at the Montreal FantAsia festival and came out puzzled by what I saw. Here I was, expecting Tsukamoto to cut loose again...and this movie was, by the standards of his earlier work, relatively calm. I'd compare it to Scorsese's "The King of Comedy" in that people will soon be hailing this one as a masterpiece.

The film is the story of two people linked together by ideals and tragedy. Tsuda is a director of commercials who is heartbroken by the suicide of his fiancee for mysterious reasons. He soon develops a fascination with guns.

Later on, we meet Chisato, a young woman who is the driving force behind a gang of Japanese toughs. Tsuda forms a bond with Chisato through multiple encounters with the gangs. Whereas the other members of the gang are middle-class kids looking for fun, Chisato has a death wish and a suicidal streak which propels her to violence.

Here's hoping that Bullet Ballet gets released soon, as it is technically perfect as well as emotionally dead-on.

A much more articulate Shinya has used his extremely visceral palette to produce a deeper film that passes over the gorehound's head and explores the scars of depression and self-destruction in ways that other film-makers have overlooked. From the beginning where Goda confronts his fiancee's death in a mirror while a cricket twitches under a dripping tap beneath him, to a deathwish game that the hoodlum girl Chisato plays later on in the subways, hooking her heels over the edge and delighting as the passing train throttle passes her, the imagery is amazing. Shot in intimate black and white, the graphic impact of its intense releases (There is a bit of animation on guns that's like a KMFDM video) hit you to hold you and keep you with the story until the end. At the screening I attended there were those who were disappointed that the violence lacked the kind of escapist punch that make other Hong Kong films so fun to watch, but I think Shinya was aiming for something different, and he succeeded. This is my favorite film of his and I definitely look forward to his next. For those trying to get an idea of what to expect, well it's the kind of surrealistic dreams that are often thought of by David Cronenberg and David Lynch. If you follow that path and walk with such minds than you should take a walk with Shinya Tsukamoto and see Bullet Ballet.