Tôkyô zonbi

"Tokyo Zombie" is exactly what you would expect from a zombie movie from Japan; being cheesy, Japanese people painted ashen-gray, and an overall exaggeration of everything.

The story in "Tokyo Zombie" was actually alright. We follow the two very odd, both in appearance and personality, friends Fujio (played by Tadanobu Asano) and Mitsuo (played by Shô Aikawa), working at a fire-extinguisher factory. The people of Tokyo are burying their trash and their dead at Black Fuji, a black mountain of garbage. Toxic waste starts to reanimate the dead buried there, and the zombies start shambling stiffly about, looking for human flesh to devour. And soon after, Tokyo is in a lot of trouble...

The acting in this movie was as you'd expect, adequate and silly. Lots of overacting here and the zombies were just hilarious. You need to approach this movie with no sense of an actual serious zombie movie. This is a zombie comedy spoof, and it have so many elements that seen to be making fun of a lot of Romero's movies. So think of a Japanese version of an extreme version of "Shaun of the Dead", then you will have a rough idea of what "Tokyo Zombie" is like.

"Tokyo Zombie" is extreme in so many ways, but it works out well enough, because it is extreme in a hilarious way. I believe that "Tokyo Zombie" is either a movie that you will love or hate, I don't see any in-between here. I found "Tokyo Zombie" to be a fun movie to watch, it was a nice spoof of a zombie movie, in the way that only the Japanese can manage to bolster up.

Fujio (Tadanobu Asano) and Mitsuo (Sho Aikawa) spend their free time wrestling. Their boss interrupts one day and starts yelling at them. After an apparent heart attack, them dump him on the Black Fuji, a mountain of trash that contains everything - including bodies.

The chemicals in the mountain cause the dead to rise, and now Tokyo has some real problems.

You might think that writer/director Sakichi Satô would give us another Ichi the Killer, but you would be wrong. The blood is minimal. This is a comedy. There are a lot of people losing their heads, but no little gore.

The good thing is that they are real zombies, and you can outrun them.

After five years, Tokyo is completely zombified. Fujio is stuck with Yoko (Erika Okuda), a girl Mitsuo saved before he was bitten, and those that are not zombies are slaves for the rich.

Things do get really funny at the end, and a little crazy, too.

I just wish they wouldn't have repeatedly used the "R" word.

This movie was way too long. It has left me so cold and disinterested that I struggle to even trash the damned thing!

There are some amusing scenes (not funny, just amusing) but some, like the one where bald man (I forget his name) says he has cancer, that seem to go on for an eternity.

I used to be a stickler for uncut movies but lately I've come around to the position that maybe the distributer and producers were sometimes right to reign in the excesses of wannabe epics, especially ones where so little actually happens that you can probably describe the whole 104 minutes in a few sentences.

This isn't so much a zombie picture as a character study that just happens to have zombies in it and the characters are a bunch of idiotic whiners.

If you want to see a good Asian zombie flick, go check out one called Bio Zombie. It's actually funny (not just amusing), has a better buddy sub-plot, and has real action and suspense.

TOKYO ZOMBIE is an oddball 'Buddy Flic' within 'The Genre Of The Undead". Director, Sakichi Sato, who is probably best known for playing Charlie Brown in Quentin Tarantino's 2003 film KILL BILL:VOL. I, has crafted a horror film of equal parts buffoonery and blood. Whatever ironic elements that were inherent to classic Horror are ramped up and played as belly laughs. SHAWN OF THE DEAD is certainly a prime example of this trend. Tadanobu Asano is a highly regarded Japanese model and film star, and plays Fujio,the fright-wig wearing half of the dimwitted duo. Asano is better known for his more serious roles, yet is able to deliver the laughs as required. However, both lead roles remain sketchy, and the film strives for more character development in the second half of the movie, but doesn't go far enough. TOKYO ZOMBIE will probably best be appreciated by aficionados of contemporary Japanese art films, while the majority of viewers will be left in the dark.

Zombie movies have been taking rather weird turns in development recently. We got romantic zombie movies ("Shaun Of The Dead"), we got super-fast zombie movies ("28 Days Later" and "Dawn Of The Dead"), we got super-hero comic book zombie movies ("Resident Evil: Apocalypse) and we got non-zombie, zombie movies (again "28 Days Later"). Well things just continue getting weirder and weirder, and now we got this, "Tokyo Zombie" a completely offbeat, comically silly representation of a zombie Holocaust in Tokyo. Even stranger, the choice of weapon against the undead scourge is neither, swords or guns. It's wrestling, Jujistsu to be more precise. I was interested enough with it's premise but when I heard it starred two of my favorite Japanese actors, Sho Aikawa and Tadanobu Asano, well I really had to watch it.

"Tokyo Zombie" as it's name suggests takes place in the Japanese capital. There, due to the unpleasant habits of the local population to throw away their garbage wherever they like to, has caused a large mountain of trash to appear. But people are not content with just that, oh no, they continue burying more and more stuff in that mountain. Ranging from refrigerators, old cars, even people there really is no limit. This is where our heroes enter the story, Fujio (Tadanobu Asano) and Mitsuo (Sho Aikawa), two obsessed with wrestling garage workers who end up accidentally killing their boss. Of course that mountain prompts the obvious solution to their disposition and they naturally decide to bury him there. What they don't know and later find out is that all the dumped trash has created a chemical reaction that causes the dead buried in the mountain to rise again, as flesh eating zombies.

Instead of trying to make a relatively serious story director Sakichi Sato takes a turn for the comedic. The plot is an obvious pastiche of classical zombie scenarios. Starting with the zombie epidemic to the post-apocalyptic society, Sato presents an over the top comical side to this all too familiar plot. The overview of how the post-epidemic survivors continue to exist is quite funny, Sato answers one of the biggest mysteries of zombie movie. How do people create electricity when the entire world is supposed to be overwhelmed by endless hordes of undead flesh eaters ? Well the answer is simple. Squeeze Electric a company that supplies all the pollutant-free electricity citizens would need. It works by using state of the art technology, requiring just a few hundred people whose's daily work includes squeezing an electric pod that in terms creates the all needed energy. Everything is completely ludicrous. Characters are no exception, with quirky outright funny dialog and a strangely obsessive singe-minded behavior, they breathe a fresh air of unseriousness to this already not very serious situation.

For a zombie movie "Tokyo Zombie" is pretty light hearted. Anyone expecting bucket-loads of gore and blood will be disappointed, there is really only one situation that could be described as disturbingly gory. A zombie starts chewing on a wrestler's guts, the whole thing lasts for less then a minute and honestly rather than disturbing it's quite funny when the victim starts making those silly facial expressions. Midway through the film there is a rather pleasant animated sequence that describes the aftermath of the zombie apocalypse. Other effects are generated using CGI and it's a hit or miss thing. Some look pretty well while other effects are plain cheesy, which is not a bad thing considering the fact that it's a comedy.

"Tokyo Zombi" is wacky, wild and in typical Japanese way quite weird. It's fun over-the-top plot makes it worthwhile to watch. Or if you just want to poke fun at the already way too familiar clichés surrounding the genre, this is as good as it goes.