Why Don't You Play in Hell?

Nutty yakuza comedy from Sion Sono. It's overlong, particularly with an interminable set-up, but once we get to the big action set piece you'll find it well worth the wait. A group of amateur filmmakers calling themselves the F Bombers (led by Hiroki Hasegawa) has spent a decade looking for the opportunity to make a real movie. Fortunately (or unfortunately) for them, a yakuza gang is looking for someone to make a feature starring the boss's daughter (Jun Kunimura is the boss, Fumi Nikaido the daughter). Hasegawa proposes that they film the real-life gang war that is bound to happen with the rival gang (led by Shin'ichi Tsutsumi). Sono really could have shortened the film considerably had he realized the character played by Gen Hoshino, the love interest of Nikaido, was worthless and jettisoned him. Or, more obviously, he should have been combined with Hasegawa's character. As it is, Hoshino plays a shy, ineffectual character and he pretty much gets shoved to the background anytime the more lively Hasegawa is on screen. I can't imagine anyone caring about his burgeoning relationship with the drop-dead gorgeous Nikaido. None of this really matters once we get to the blood-soaked finale, which is about as fun as any movie I've seen in recent memory.

"This movie exists only to impress you."

Acclaimed Japanese director, Shion Sono (Love Exposure, Suicide Club, Coldfish) has crafted a delirious and extremely over the top comedic action thriller which will surely impress audiences all around the globe. It's very difficult to try to write a review for a film like this that seems to be all over the place. It was a truly unique and crazy experience. At first it feels like the stories aren't related, but as the film progresses every single scene serves a purpose and it all comes together at the end. Sono is an artist and in this film we can see the passion he has with film. This is his love letter to 35mm filmmaking and he mixes several genres into one glorious experience. In a way it is similar to what Quentin Tarantino brings to his films. Over the top violent action sequences with a lot of fake CGI blood, a lot of humor thrown into the mix, and several movie references. Just like Tarantino referenced Bruce Lee in Kill Bill through Uma Thurman, there is a character here who also resembles Lee in his yellow and black uniform. However Sono doesn't follow a similar narrative structure as Tarantino and doesn't rely as much on the wise cracking dialogue. WDYPIH? has a very unique structure and it's hard to know what direction its heading at times because it seems to be all over the place. It is a crazy experience, but it is hard to resist. My only complaint is with the pacing of the film which at times seems to drag. I had fun with this movie, but I still found myself checking my watch once in a while. This could've been better if it was cut to around 90 minutes, but it is still a film I admire very much.

The film centers on a group of young film aficionados who dream and pray to the movie god that he allow them to make an epic film, but it is clear they aren't heading anywhere when ten years later all they've managed to do is make a one minute trailer. There is also a huge confrontation going on between two yakuza clans. The Kitagawa yakuza clan attacked the Muto yakuza clan at their leader's own home. Muto wasn't around, but his wife faced them off leaving a pool of blood behind. Due to the violent scene, the police never believed it was self defense and imprisoned Muto's wife for ten years. Their young daughter had a successful toothpaste commercial taken off the air as well due to the violent episode. Her dreams of becoming a successful actress were shattered by the removal of the commercial. The clans have declared a truce but as Muto's wife sentence is approaching its deadline war breaks out again between them. Muto must manage the confrontation while delivering on his promise to his wife of having her daughter become the star of a movie by the time she is released. He promises it will be epic and through fate he encounters these aspiring film aficionados who are given the perfect scenario to make the film they've been dreaming of making for the past ten years. Everything seems to be leading to an outrageously bloody conclusion as Muto plans to kill two birds with one stone.

Shine Sono's love and passion for Japanese cinema can be experienced here in this unique and extremely crazy love letter to film. It is over the top and full of energy, but it always remains imaginative. It is unlike any other film I've seen and manages to capture that nostalgic sense of a disappearing art form while remaining incredibly unique and energetic. This is an extremely violent and irreverent film, but it is so over the top that it never feels gory. It can become a bit tedious due to its long running time, but the ending fulfills and it is a film that will stick with you long after the credits role. The performances from Jun Kunimura as Muto, Shin'ichi Tsutsumi as Ikegami, and Itsuji Itao as Masuda stand out in this wacky and crazy film.

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Beneath all my suffocating inhibitions, my inability to share my true feelings, my fear of doing what it is that I really want to do - there is a character somewhat akin to 'Hirata', in Sion Sono's 'Why Don't You Play in Hell?'. Here is a ridiculous and frankly insane character - a wannabe film director (and leader of the 'F**k Bombers' cinema club) who'll go to literally any length to realize his dreams and is not remotely discouraged by his complete lack of accomplishments over the past ten years. He's nuts, and yet my soul is frankly screaming for me to live my life with the same liberated, unashamed, energetic, joie d'vivre, that Hirata maintains in the face of it all... The spirit of the F**k Bombers!

Before Sion Sono was a filmmaker, he was part of a poetry collective called 'Tokyo GAGAGA', that took their poetry screaming into the streets. 'GAGAGA', Sono's explained, is the 'sound of the soul'. By that same token, I've often felt that Sion Sono's characters are the soul, personified: their actions are crazy, over-the-top, and usually comically violent - they're not realistic, normal characters - and yet I see my own soul realistically reflected in his characters, more strongly than anyone else's.

Like Kurosawa's 'Dreams', 'Why Don't You Play in Hell?' is autobiographical in the most uniquely and completely outlandish way. Hirata is Sono, from his early amateur filmmaking days, when he really did go round with his gang, calling themselves the F**k Bombers, playing Bruce Lee in the park, and being called an idiot by young children. That just about everything else in this movie is heavily fictionalized is pretty obvious, but just as Sono's characters don't reflect normal people, but capture their spirits, his story, if you consider it autobiographical, captures the spirit of his experience becoming a professional filmmaker. It's a movie about the spirit of movies, the spirit of filmmaking, and as Sono says, the 'love of 35mm'.

It's also about a yakuza turf war. And there's some romance as well: a meek boy falls in love with a girl after seeing her shove a piece of broken glass through another guy's cheek with her tongue, and shortly gets over his own shyness. The movie is a crazily-ridiculous breathlessly-paced action-comedy, capturing the same punk rock energy as Sono's Love Exposure, and it's his most polished-looking film yet. It's a lighter affair than most of the movies he made before - the psycho-horrors and the Fukushima-dramas - but it's no less good; it's thoroughly entertaining from start to finish, and especially, everything after the F**k Bombers finally cross paths with the yakuza is pure genius.

It's a movie that had me laughing, had me tapping my feet to the music (all written and composed by Sono himself), and had me grinning cheek-to-cheek the whole way through. And, like Sono's very best movies (Hazard, Love Exposure), it might have even inspired me, to loosen my inhibitions a little bit.

Shion Sono, one of Japan's contemporary cult directors, makes a follow-up to cinephile hits like Suicide Club, Noriko's Dinner Table, Strange Circus, Hair Extensions, Love Exposure, Coldfish and Himizu. After The Land of Hope, his idiosyncratic sci-fi drama shot around the Fukushima disaster, the transgressive Sono makes another instant cult hit with Why Don't You Play in Hell? This definitely won't appeal to a mainstream audience and to be honest, at first I had quite some difficulties watching it myself. It all seems a bit over the top and because of that it felt amateuristic. On the other hand I suppose this is the authentic style Sono is known for. With some patience I endured the first half an hour. Once I got familiar with its peculiarities, irony, meta-references and subversive character, this film started to grow on me. Especially the part of the young movie team that has been procrastinating their film project for years; while this is more of a sideline to the story, Why Don't You Play in Hell? depends on it for its absurd climax. The only thing I couldn't get into was the over-the-top acting. Cool movie with a high DIY vibe, although not flawless.

Fate causes the paths of a guerrilla film crew and two feuding Yakuza clans to clash for the second time in ten years in this outlandish comedy from 'Suicide Club' director Sion Sono. The movie initially feels like a twisted version of 'Bowfinger' or 'Cecil B. DeMented' as the young guerrilla filmmakers heartlessly intrude on the Yakuza madness to get money shots. In between the violence, there are also some moments of macabre beauty too, such as a young girl in a white dress sliding through a sea of blood, and things get more complex as the story progresses and jumps to the present. Deliciously weird and wacky as the film is, it takes a long time for the paths of the protagonists to cross once again, and the film feels way too long. It is, however, the midsection that needs trimming (especially a romance) as the carnage-heavy finale is glorious with the guerrillas' insensitivity to all the bloodshed at peak. The unemotional way in which they film all the action is uncanny; one gets a sense that they have completely lost all sense of distinction between reality and movie-making. The film has some solid performances too, particularly from Jun Kunimura as a much-feared Yakuza boss whose daughter used to be in toothpaste commercials, and Shinichi Tsutsumi as the other Yakuza boss who became fixated on Kunimura's little girl at an age that many would consider creepy. Fumi Nikaidou (as the adult daughter) also keeps singing her toothpaste jingle. It is that kind of delirious, unconventional comedy if one is in the mood for something decidedly different.