Tôkyô zankoku keisatsu

This movie is proof positive that the Japanese are the craziest people on the face of the earth. It bears a striking resemblance to Robocop, while, at the same time, putting the gory effects of the Peter Weller film to shame. Commercials let us know that this epoch of Tokyo is one where self mutilation and violent death are not only the norm, they are entertainment. Where Robocop addresses the privatization of law enforcement, this film starts after the privatization occurred.

The woman who plays Ruka is an attractive stoic sort, believable as a tough woman seeking vengeance for her father's death. Ruka is an "engineer" killer. An engineer, in this movie, is kind of like a Guyver if the movie were done by the effects people from Videodrome. If you don't like gore, avoid this flick like the plague; although, if you bought or rented a movie called "Tokyo Gore Police" and didn't expect gore, there isn't much hope for you.

I gave this movie a seven out of ten because they did try to make a real movie out of this. The concept was a little dumb; but, the world that the movie was set in was interesting...

Combine a Paul Verhoeven-style dystopian vision of the future (of the kind seen in Robocop and Starship Troopers) with the body-shock horror of David Cronenberg, throw in absolutely tons of OTT cartoonish gore ala Peter Jackson and some outrageously twisted horror of the kind that only the Japanese could imagine, and then add every last shred of bizarre Anime-inspired imagery that you can think of, and the result may look something like Tokyo Gore Police, a completely bonkers, gore-drenched epic from director Yoshihiro Nishimura.

Since it would take me forever and a day to try and catalogue every last moment of gore and depravity in this film, and even longer to try and describe the plot (beyond mentioning the fact that the story sees a young woman seeking revenge for her father's death), I'm not going to bother; suffice to say that gore-hounds who seek out this freaky film will be treated to continuous stomach churning images of bodily dismemberment, S & M themed grotesquery, and scenes of complete random violence from start to finish, and the fact that the story makes very little sense (at least until the very end, when plot threads finally start to come together) should not matter in the least.

Ironically, though, it is this relentless approach that stops me from giving Tokyo Gore Police a perfect 10/10. When a film begins with the gore and weirdness levels stuck firmly at ten, then there is nowhere left for the film to go. For nearly two hours, the blood sprays, limbs are ripped off, heads roll, and bodies are torn asunder; whilst this is admittedly lots of fun, it leaves little room for progression and zero chance of a genuinely satisfying climax (Oooer missus!).

Wow. That's one word to say after this master's class in splatter-fest ends. But there's more, lots more. This is classic modern exploitation fare, not exactly a very good movie, no, but absolutely spectacular in everything that it sets out to accomplish. Which is, basically, to try and out-do whatever's come before it in terms of outrageous splendor of body parts, dismemberment, be-headings, sword-cuts, arm cuts, and blood flying out like it's a dam exploded. And on top of this the filmmakers have an incredible design conceit that allows for limbs, once torn off or exploded or shredded or whatever, to spring back crazy appendages that range from heat-seeking missiles to crocodile jaws to genital "restructuring." There is no other movie quite like it.

It's also, not so oddly enough, a rip-off in part of the Paul Verhoven RoboCop/Starship Troopers style of putting in advertisements and PSA's in honor and exquisite mockery of the police-state the movie is set in (thankfully, the director, Noshihiro Nishimura, is just as brilliant at these as Verhoven, especially when doing bits like "Cutting yourself is cute!" and "Don't commit Harakiri!"), not to mention the bubbly little Japanese girl ala Battle Royale communicating to the public. But the concept itself, however ripped-off, is not exactly what's important (it's police/revenge saga mixed with wacko sci-fi bits like splicing genes from various serial killers to create the perfect psycho). What's important with Tokyo Gore Police is the daring to just go and do whatever the f*** is possible within this scope of total abhorrent violence and death and blood and guts and limbs sometimes stacked in piles ("No, no, the *right* hand!" is a great throwaway line).

Basically, if there's any other movie aside from possible Dead-Alive that can contend with it, this is the goriest movie ever made outside of the US. Even for Japan, who have produced some of the craziest action/horror/sci-fi stuff anywhere ever (Miike especially can lay claim to some of it), it's extreme and it's certainly not for the faint of heart or easily offended or yada yada. It's for the fans, the die-hard group that just can't seem to, on the contrary of most, be offended by anything. In fact, that's the joy of watching Tokyo Gore Police, which with a few scenes as exceptions where they get into real "Dramatic" moments, being that so much goes on, one thing tops the next, that it's impossible to keep a straight face. Eihi Shiina (of Audition) as the hero of the story comes across so much craziness with the "Engineers" as they're called, who face off against the militant police in a dire battle, that by the time the end credits roll we can't keep up with the final body count.

In short, this is the kind of movie that Patrick Bateman or Alexander De Large would rent about 300 times. If you know who you are in the audience, and you love insane horror that is laced with bristling, so-over-the-top-it-reaches-the-moon comedy, seek it out. You won't be disappointed as far as after-midnight/gross-out-your-girlfriend flicks go.

These movies are hard to be harsh on, since like Troma, which I feel this was inspired by, it knows its trash and sets out to be the trashiest of trash. And it succeeds.

Normally I'm not the most squeamish of people when it comes to movies, but this movie made me sick, which again, it was setting out to do. I kind of liked it, but won't watch it again. There's a lot of blood, a lot of gore, and a lot of fluids, and it's that last part that gets me. I don't like puss videos, I don't seek out LiveLeak stuff either. BUT when it's in a movie, and you know it's fake that's another thing.

Lady cop kills a bunch of mutant scum. There's no depth to it, no pretension, it is surface level. You'll either like it, respect and acknowledge that it did what it wanted it to do, or be annoyed by it not being more than as surface level as it is.

It's a silly movie with silly gore, and that's it. Since it is going for comedy, that's where it starts failing, while subjective, I feel like too many times things are forced in there be it jokes or gore. It rides that fine line of the camp it's going for and being trashy and ruining its goal.

There's one particular fun fact in the trivia section that I'm easily willing to believe. It states that the film was fully completed in approximately only two weeks… Well yes, that about explains why most of the events in "Tokyo Gore Police" are so damn random and why the entire screenplay appears to be improvised as they went along. Admittedly I'm not the biggest fan of this type of extremely chaotic and Manga-like Japanese fantasy/splatter, and it actually took me around 8 years before I had the courage to finally unwrap the DVD I picked up at a bargain price, but still this remained a very tiring and difficult viewing for me. I don't know about most people, but I just like a minimum of structure, logic and sense and, if that's also for you the case, then Tokyo Gore Police (and by extension the entire repertoire of weirdo Yoshihiro Nishimura) probably isn't the best choice to watch. Still, large parts of it are undeniably terrific, imaginative and truly entertaining! I'm not necessarily referring to the grotesque gore and excessive bloodshed, but rather towards the sick black humor and totally deranged little details (like eccentric supportive characters, decors, make-up designs, etc…)

I was actually lying when I implied that "Tokyo Gore Police" doesn't feature any structure whatsoever. The overall structure is that many of this film's story lines are seemingly homages to the great Sci- Fi/action classics of director Paul Verhoeven! Surely it cannot be a coincidence there are so many similarities with at least three of Verhoeven's most successful movies? The basic plot concept of the police restructuring/privatizing is clearly borrowed from "Robocop", and the sudden interludes to show fake futuristic TV-commercials are even blatantly stolen from that same 1987 classic. Lead heroine Ruca is on a mission to battle a bizarrely evil breed of super villains known as "engineers", and when they get hurt they inexplicably transform into disgusting mutant creatures. Perhaps this is just me, but many of these mutants instantly reminded me of the mutant community members on Mars in Verhoeven's "Total Recall"; especially the ones in the sex bar. I didn't spot a woman with three breasts here, but definitely a lot of other and similarly freaky stuff! And then, of course, there's the ultimate cult classic "Starship Troopers", from which "Tokyo Gore Police" imitates the satirical and unscrupulous propaganda to join the army (or, in this case, the private police force) and supposedly protect mankind by waving around massive guns and shoot people.

Yoshihiro Nishimura certainly deserves praise and applause for being able to mix all these Paul Verhoeven formulas and still insert a lot of his own demented ideas, that's for sure. Many sequences are also genuinely hilarious, like the tongue-in-cheek commercials that attempt to sell colorful self-mutilation knives or the anti-Harakiri campaign). But the truth remains also that "Tokyo Gore Police" is dreadfully overlong and too quickly become repetitive and tedious. 118 minutes is unacceptably long for nonsensical splatter, so after a short while it becomes rather boring to witness the umpteenth anatomically incorrect blood shower that gushes out of someone's body hole where their head or leg or arm used to be. In horror terms, there's nothing as painful as a boring gore flick!