Tokyo Porrada

The first ten minutes are awesome. The movie is very strong, but the quality varies a lot along its development until its bad end. Both the fast paced training scenes and the oppressive Tokyo city footage are very nice. Though, the bizarreness of the story bores. This is a live action film with an anime aesthetics (for anime fans perhaps the movie pleases more). It could be a great movie if it had developed better the main character's ordinary life as a white collar, the chaos of the city (the story does not explore the interesting way the town is shown), the dangerous boxer who tattooes the number of defeated challengers on his shoulder. Less emphasis in body horror and sneezing blood would also contribute to a more satisfactory outcome. The director's brother should be substituted by a better actor. A different and better story for the love triangle would be necessary too. To conclude, the director/writer/actor Shin'ya Tsukamoto has the skills, but lacks good taste and makes bad decisions.

Watching a movie by Shinya Tsukamoto is a bit like staring into the deepest pits of hell, or the darkest recesses of the male psyche, whichever way you want to put it. But then the two seem fairly synonymous, at least if the sheer visceral anger in Tokyo Fist is anything to go by.

Those aware of Tsukamoto's feature-length debut Tetsuo (1988) will be familiar with the basic premise in Tokyo Fist; flawed relationship between man and woman is brutally disrupted by an outside element which challenges the protagonist to a potentially lethal, and eventually soul-destroying, duel. Similarly to other pioneers of horror (eg. Cronenberg, Miike), Tsukamoto chooses to use all kinds of repulsive visuals. Just to give you an idea, if a face almost literally falling off after a boxing match is too much for you, it's probably best to stay away from this film.

However, the brutal imagery is not completely pointless. Tokyo Fist portrays male anger with such honesty that it is sometimes painful to watch, but that's really the point since violence is not something to be cooed at or to be admired (which is what many Hollywood movies seemingly aim to achieve, witness the way audiences are prompted to cheer for the good guy as he murders the baddie). The violence in Tokyo Fist is allegorical in nature, ie. it stands for something else than just simply fists flying: the inability between men and women (and, indeed, men and men) to understand each other ultimately leads to the kind of extreme violence we see on screen. This, ironically, makes Tokyo Fist a part of the great humanist tradition in Japanese cinema, alongside Rashomon and other such movies, because, even though it uses extreme imagery to make a point, it makes the same point all the same: if we relish in jealousy, revenge and anger we will only end up destroying each other, and ultimately ourselves. Does Hollywood ever deal with violence this eloquently?

Also, as with Tetsuo, the characters in Tokyo Fist seem to live entirely in a world of their own. Many shots frame them either alone, or surrounded by an anonymous mass which fails to notice them or appreciate their presence (even as Tsuda stands in the middle of a shopping mall, his face beaten to a pulp). I can't think of another film-maker who sums up urban alienation as brilliantly as Tsukamoto does; the sheer contradiction of city life, in which a great mass of people are all huddled together at close range, and yet find themselves completely lonely and alienated from one another.

For all intents and purposes, Tokyo Fist is a movie which requires a strong stomach and an open mind. But it's a great achievement all the same.

This is not a movie you experience with the brain, rather it's an assault on the senses. Some of my favourite cinema does that, and I'm always on the lookout for movies that call us to live through a certain experience, to vicariously sense the world as another person might. The ultimate joy is for me to be able to take out something that matters, an otherwise impossible view of the world in my livingroom that makes sense.

The problem of Tokyo Fist is that it's packed with so much rage and annihilation yet aims it nowhere. The boxer characters are punching, but they're not punching outwards, at society, nor inwards at the soul, they're simply pummeling and being pummeled senseless. Senseless is an apt word here, for in Tokyo Fist the mind doesn't matter, and the human body is something to be destroyed, the senses torn from it and thrown in a bloody heap on a grimy floor. Tsukamoto can be seen beating his head in a bloody pulp against a wall, but that wall signifies nothing. The spurts of blood gushing from broken noses and deformed bonecheeks, the film celebrates with the comic verve of Sam Raimi.

With time Tsukamoto would grow out of the techno angst of this period, but enabling the maturity of films like Vital, a certain youthful vitality had to be sacrificed in the process. I lament this because few directors dare make films like his, even Tsukamoto himself doesn't seem able to make them anymore.

Fits of jealousy, miserable love triangles, personality changes, all these are trifle story points. What I take from Tokyo Fist is the aimlessness of violence, taken to the extreme because there's nothing to absorb it. Likely Tsukamoto grew up in a Japanese society of the 80's and 90's, like the rest of the world, stifled in the mire of apathy and complacency. People had the money to buy and the selection to buy from, but not the struggle with grand ideals. The resulting New Wave of his cinema is a New Wave of disillusionment turned against itself, a shell without a solid core to make it dream a better society.

In this light, it makes sense to see Tsukamoto playing a young employee, fresh out of high school and already into a suit and a tie running errands for a faceless corporation, turning into a crazed animal for whom even love is a petulant obsession, another passing need to be consummated.

lemme start out by saying that i enjoyed tetsuo one very much, to me it was like a live action anime. i was excited to see tokyo fist when i saw the directors name and by judging the comments on it here. I have to say that i really didnt understand what he was getting at 90 percent of the time. lots of cameras shaking up and down and blood spouting from peoples heads does not a good movie make. I dont understand one of the comments here, saying that it was "infinitely more coherant" then tetsuo. for one thing the dialogue was so badly translated that they could barely put the most simple of english words in the correct context. i dont mind a complete lack of plot, as long as the ride is interesting. this to me was not.

Tsukamoto in this film strips away excess to reveal a animal emotions which are then stretched to excess. In this film anger, violence, pain and revenge drive the action.

Tsuda and Kojima witness the murder of a girl they like and while both vow to find and punish the killers only Kojima holds on to the twisted dream to become a second rate boxer. Tsuda becomes a salaryman in a sexless relationship in which they spend the evenings watching old films (I spotted Metropolis and another which I can't place). A chance meeting between the two after many years awakens the anger that Kojima feels towards Tsuda, and the former begins making a play for Hizuru, Tsuda's girlfriend. This in turn leads Tsuda to become angry and he turns to boxing to get revenge on his former friend. Meanwhile Hikuru becomes a masochist, autonomous of both the males.

The fairly graphic violence is mostly make up and is so over the top it is clearly to make the point mentioned in one of the other comments: violence is often the first recourse in a situation. However, as opposed to a film like Rocky where the violence leads to personal redemption, or an emotional force like Raging Bull, the violence is non-cathartic and meaningless. It is almost as if the characters are driven to behave in a certain way as a reflex reaction.

Fast editing, powerful sound effects and blue colours mark the film out as Tsukamoto's style, and the transformation theme is another element that he returns to. Lots of fun for me, but the person I was with didn't have a clue what was going on. Make your own decision, but there is no relationship to Fight Club whatsoever: this is about human emotion, not social issues.