Tokyo 10+01

This was a good movie. It was clearly low budget and not well made. BUT as bad as it would look, it is hilarious. This whole movie HAS to be taken as a joke otherwise it is no good.

It has a lame story, mostly pretty bad actors, and bas special effects. It was filmed poorly and its whole gun pointing at camera things wasn't that cool.

It of course is a spoof of Battle Royale. Which is a good movie and you can tell it is joking on BR from the beginning. A bunch of criminals wake up in a wear house and are forced to play a game to win 300 million yen and a clean slate. But they quickly learn that only one of them will make it out alive.

It is just a joke. That is what it is. If you take it that way, it is a laugh out loud funny.

Battle Royale fans should get a good kick out of this movie.

Basically a group of people are forced into playing a deadly game. They have to be the first to reach a mansion where a lot of money awaits the winner. The catch is that a group of machine gun carrying thugs get to chase after them and to make sure that they don't get that far. That's the best summary I can give without spoiling anything about the movie.

The characters are really interesting and the movie was made to look as unrealistic as possible, but that's what makes the whole thing so funny. Some things Battle Royale fans would get a kick out of are the many traits they take from the movie like a girl on a video screen explaining the rules and the poison filled bracelets the contestants wear. They even admit straight out in the beginning of the movie that they stole all of the ideas.

But the thing I loved the most was Masanobu Ando the actor who played Kazuo Kiriyama! is in the movie once again as the crazed player looking to win and yes, he gets to kill people.

So in my opinion Tokyo 10+01 makes a lovely addition to your movie collection.

"Tokyo 10+01" comes from director Higuchinsky who brought us the imaginative and entertaining "Uzumaki". That makes it all the more surprising and disappointing that the action flick is such a mess. It starts out with 11 people in an unknown room (shades of "Cube") and quickly turns into a parody/hommage of Kinji Fukasakus "Battle Royale" with a couple of ideas from the German TV movie "Das Millionenspiel" thrown in for good measure. The result is an embarrassing piece of film: The story has no power, no sense, no timing, no anything. It just moves along for only 70 minutes and still manages to bore. And the twists at the end are so bad, the film even manages to have an anti-climactic ending.

It's neither funny nor gory, neither suspenseful nor witty. So at least you could expect it to be stylish coming from the guy who did "Uzumaki", right? No. Its look is utterly cheap. The digital technology makes the sets look like remains from "Battlefield Earth" and the camera tricks (zooms, blood on the lens etc.) are both childish and annoying. I don't get how Higuchinsky could have done this. What did he try to do? Low-Budget-Trash? Some sort of guerilla film making? Whatever he tried, the result is a disaster. If you loved "Uzumaki" like I did, avoid this film at all cost or the name Higuchinsky will fall a lot in your esteem. It's a bore-fest that looks like it's shot by an amateur. Or in short: Crap!

Rating: 1/10

'Tokyo 10+01' has a promising start, introducing colorful characters who will be involved in a game of death. The soundtrack was decent too. However, the film goes downhill due to poor special effects and poor spoof jokes. The title of the film is a spoof of Ocean's Eleven (2001) and there were some references to Brad Pitt in the beginning of the film. Overall, it was unbearable to watch even though the runtime is only 70 minutes.

If you are looking for good spoof films, I recommend Spaceballs (1987) and Kung Pow (2002). Please stay away from 'Tokyo 10+01'.

Mao points: 2/10

Having no previous knowledge of the directory Higuchinsky or his history, I didn't expect much from this movie judging by Netflix's rating. What I found however was a pretty hip piece of independent youthful film-making that kind of blends the 80's, 90's and the future.

It reminded me of a hard core version of Takeshi's Castle (AKA Most Extreme Elimination Challenge).

Eleven unwitting participants are thrown together into a city wide game in which they must split up into teams and make it across the finish line before their time expires. Each is fitted with a wrist band that reveals their location and time remaining. Removal of the wristband results in a lethal injection. Groups are intercepted along their route by henchmen. Proximity of henchmen is detected and signaled by the wristbands.

A kind of real life D&D, treasure hunt, survivor, laser tag, reality TV spoof.

This movie has the appearance of a student film or home made movie. It looks like it was shot on video tape and transferred to film, however the acting, special effects and gags are just as good as any American teenage slasher comedy, except is has the coolness of a video game, urban anime and Japanese game show all rolled into one.

I really liked it.

=Game Over=