Tokyo Gore Police

Ever since that epic 4 minute trailer was released last year, Tokyo Gore Police has been my most sought out movie for the last few months. The trailer was quite simply a glorious showcase of screwed up gore with a cool score to back. I was slightly worried that the trailer showed all the gory parts, leaving the movie with nothing interesting (which happens all too often). Fortunately I was wrong, Tokyo Gore Police is nothing short of one of the goriest, most insanely f#cked up movies ever made. Now, I will get this out of the way now, this is technically not a "good" movie: the plot is flimsy at best, the SFX are low-grade and there is no character development; however, this movie is entertaining and fun.

There is a story, which is set in the future, where criminals called "engineers" mutilate their bodies and transform into half-machine half-human monstrosities to wreck havoc. Ruka (Eihi Shiina, from Audition fame) is an "engineer" hunter who uncovers some hidden secrets involving her past from an engineer which reveal a corrupted police force.

Really, that is the extent of the story, with the rest of the movie the director's way of showcasing some serious messed up mutations and plenty of arteriole spray. This is the only movie I think you will ever see something like a chair made of human flesh which urinates on a group of people into S&M, a man with a penis gun, a woman with a snail shell and a crocodile/vagina fusion. This is all OTT and played for laughs, and I think it works that way. In no way should this be taken seriously, much like The Machine Girl, this is a ridiculous movie that really accomplishes what it sets out to. Although it runs for a good 110 minutes, it feels like its over before it starts (due to its unrelenting pace).

Already I think this is a candidate for one of the best movies of the year, and I believe its guaranteed to be a cult classic! If you enjoy Cronenberg style biological horror and enjoyed Tetsuo: Iron Man then this is right up your alley.

4½/5

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!

Blood is a very important thing, I mean very important. Without it people, mammals in general, birds, fish, lizards, hell even insects tend to die. I'm afraid that is indeed true, luckily for us "Tokyo Gore Police" teaches us that an ordinary human body contains enough blood to put the entire European continent under water... under blood really. But blood can be very helpful, amazing I know, but "Tokyo Gore Police" shows us how we can use this completely ordinary not-so-interesting combination of some cells and some plasma as a stylish fashion accessory for our daily clothes. Even more, blood can help a human being fulfill one of his most ancient, ever since that video on youtube with that guy running around flapping his arms, and holy desires, namely to fly. To do so you must simply cut off or saw of your legs from the knee down and the endless gush of arterial blood will do the rest. Blood can also be used for offensive purposes, to accomplish this we must simply combine ordinary blood tissue with some brain and voila, bloody brain bullets with some nice visual and physical effect, also that way you can save some iron, some petrol, some gun powder thus ending the Financial crisis.

But "Tokyo Gore Police" teaches us so much more. Here are some short descriptions of the wisdom and brilliance director Yoshihiro Nishimura and writers Kengo Kaji and Sayako Nakoshi demonstrate in this film, in no particular order: - don't ever get on the wrong side with a woman who has jaws for legs. - on that same note, sex really hurts. - I mean really really hurts. - The worst thing that can happen to you if you're a policeman wearing a modern samurai armor is your friend, comrade and colleague trying to kill you with his penis. - having four katanas instead of four limbs looks kind of awesome. - having four machineguns instead of four limbs looks kind of awesome. - if you're planning on doing a chainsaw duel with a friend, don't do it in a crowded area, people might get hurt, oh, what am I saying. - don't ever buy one of those fist firing miniguns, pretty useless stuff.

And if that's not all, "Tokyo Gore Police" continually mocks itself, in a way, satirizing the whole violence-obsessed media by means of mock commercials, much in the same ways as Paul Verhoven did in his classic "Starship Troopers".

And if you seriously think "Tokyo Gore Police" is more cynical than some random action blockbuster just because it shows actual violence on screen, you need to rethink your moral values.

Seriously now, it's a wonderful splice of pure Japanese splatter, that doesn't takes itself seriously, but is actually pretty smart and inventive monster of a film. And running at 2 hours long it never bores with its head-on, full throttle pace, the only thing you could wish for is a sequel. Yoshihiro Nishimura, Kengo Kaji, Sayako Nakoshi a tip my hat off to you sirs, because this is a film worthy of the title: bloody brilliant.

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.

I thought I would like this movie,it had everything that I was expecting and more but really after watching it I was a bit like...huh? The movie isn't bad, it isn't good, it's kind of just there, if you want to see bucket loads of gore and really bizarre creature people then by all means watch. I just wasn't grossed out by much of the movie, the uh club part was kinda sick though. I guess I was just expecting a bit more from this movie and it didn't deliver everything that I thought it would with such a high score on this website.

Gore fans will probably like it but in comparison to other Japanese horror or splatter films such as Koroshiya 1, it just didn't deliver.