Tetsuo II: O Homem-Martelo

I just have finished watching the movie. It is visceral and crazy as I expected but is not like the first one. Tetsuo: The Iron Man was an experimental movie. This one is less experimental with a more traditional storytelling. It is visible the movement to give a clear plot, which seems not reasonable because this style of movie is just for cult followers, anime fans or people interested in Japanese underground cinema. The same ones who would watch it with or without a clear plot.

Summarizing: The first movie was shocking and disturbing. This one is just eccentric when compared with its predecessor. Not recommended for normal audiences, maybe for anime fans. Think this movie as an anime. It is easier to enjoy it.

Tetsuo II: The body hammer has a really cool title and after seeing the first one, I was very excited to watch it. Unfortunately I was very disappointed. Tetsuo II like many other reviewers have noted, spends a lot more time developing a plot.

What is the plot? Tetsuo's son and eventually himself and his wife get captured by some guys who are keen on cyber implants. While captured they hook up a helmet to Tetsuo's head that let's them choose what memories he thinks of. They decide to kill tetsuo but tetsuo gets angry and kills them instead. Other stuff happens too.

What does this movie have to do with the original? Absolutely nothing! The original was a stunning visual story about a man transforming into metal. It was so abstract, the plot was up to interpretation, but most importantly it was fast paced and constantly challenging the viewer with fucked up imagery. In the second film Tetsuo apparently didn't go on a killing spree with his friend (as they mutually decided to at the end of the first film) In fact Tetsuo is now a family man with a wife and kid, and his enemy/friend from the first film (like everything else from the first film) doesn't even get mentioned.

The biggest problem with Tetsuo II is that the fast pace of the first film was abbandoned. Now scenes last a long time and there is hardly any cool imagery. Remember all the amazing stop motion from the first film that looked as though it would have taken a lot of effort to accomplish? Apparently the director got sick of all the time and effort of stop motion, because this film, although it obviously has a higher budget than the first, has about a third of the stop motion.

I believe Tetsuo I was such a sucess because even though the director didn't have a clear idea of the plot, the outstanding and inventive visuals carried the loose plot to interesting places. Tetsuo II on the other hand focused on a conventional plot without developing an interesting story first, resulting in a crappy incredable hulk rip off.

If you saw the first Tetsuo you might as well see this, but don't expect much.

two stars out of four

Whereas the first Tetsuo was a sweaty, psycho-sexual fever dream, Body Hammer feels like an attempt to make things more approachable. There's more of an over-arching plot, there's a (very) bare bones attempt at explaining why the things on the screen are happening, and the movie is in color with a much larger cast. Don't get me wrong, if the first movie didn't exist, this would still stand out as a bizarre a surreal film. There's some of the same impressive stop motion (though much less than the first film), a young child dies violently 20 minutes in, and the overall tone is a confusion of dark and distressing events. That being said, the first film revels in dragging the audience through a non-stop barrage of inscrutable set pieces on its spiral into fetishistic destruction. Body Hammer on the other hand, has some sequences that feel right out of a tokusatsu movie, with people in giant metal muffins and rubber suits shooting gun arms at each other. The first movie doesn't give you a chance to think about anything except for what's happening on the screen in the moment. Body Hammer has enough down time that the plot holes start to stack up. An entire group of characters just inexplicably disappear for the second third of the movie. In the end, is Body Hammer a remake? Is it a sequel? I think it's more of just another stab at a similar idea using some of the same cast. Worth a watch, but firmly in the shadow of its predecessor.

What a movie. You don't stumble onto a film like Tetsuo II: Body Hammer every day, and that's probably a good thing. The jerkier-than-Blair Witch cinematography, the wild & crazy stop motion special effects, and the bucketloads of gore are fairly sufficient to ensure that some viewers won't like this movie. Since you're actually reading this, though, you're probably a pretty jaded and open-minded film fan, which is exactly the audience that would end up liking Body Hammer. It's one of the craziest and most extreme movies I've ever seen, particularly in the brutal, nearly unwatchable flashback sequence which occurs in the last twenty minutes. It's one of those scenes that you never, ever, ever forget. But aside from the brutal and bizarre violence, there is great artistry here; the scenes between Taniguchi and his family strike a real chord of tragedy, and the special effects somehow succeed precisely because they DON'T look real at all. And Tsukamoto's vision of Tokyo is terrifying-- he makes the city look like a nearly uninhabited frozen hell of silent glass towers and crumbling steel factories. If any of this sounds appealing, you might just like this movie as much as I do. Tsukamoto's style can be incredibly jarring, but you'll end up running out to find everything else he's directed (to my knowledge, his only other films available in the US are the original Tetsuo and his horrific boxing film Tokyo Fist). Shinya Tsukamoto is one of the most inventive directors alive-- you never know what abomination he's going to create next. And Tetsuo: Body Hammer might just be his best film.

This movie is highly recommended for the fans of its predecessor, although it's not in black and white, doesn't have as good of a soundtrack or have as much surrealism as the first film, but it remains to be a bit more action-packed and (let's not forget) makes a bit more sense. This time, the salary man (the protagonist from the first film) lives a normal life with his family until one day his son gets kidnapped and the salary man is forced to be experimented on by a large a gang of skinheads which speeds up the mutating process of becoming a part-metal weapon and part-human being. It's not really a sequel but it surely is one of the greatest underrated films of-all-time and is about as good as the first film (TETSUO), if not, better.