Three words that on their own don't mean much more than their unique concepts. But put them together and you have something special. I may have mentioned this before, though I don't remember it, but I have a very broad taste in cinema. One of the extremities to which I venture frequently (in the company of my amazing partner which also found this gem) is fucked up Asian films. And when I say fucked up, I mean really weird ones, the kind that almost makes you feel guilty for enjoying it. I'll post the trailer to it but I feel it doesn't do it much justice, so right below the trailer I'll give you a quick synopsis and review, hopefully without spoiling it too much.
So as you probably guessed there's lots of gore. Duh. It does what it says on the box. This is a dystopian vision of near-future Tokyo where/when the police is fully privatised. Our protagonist is a petite, female super-cop named Ruka. She has the usual and almost stereotypical emotional baggage about the assassinated dad (notice I said ass... twice). In this alternate version of the Japanese capital, there are criminals which have somehow altered their bodies so that whenever they get hurt the wound almost miraculously transforms into a weapon. Cool huh? Our traumatised hero is trained especially to hunt down and destroy these people who are also known as "engineers", making her, rather cheesily, an "engineer-hunter". By the way, I should have said this earlier, the film is very cheesy so if you can't deal with that, well, get the fuck off my porch!
Anyway, there's tons of blood spurting with great force out of severed limbs and various other gashes and cuts, taking the whole notion to new extremes (I will not spoil the last scene, I will not spoil the last scene). The visual effects people have really set a new standard in this niche of cinema and as far as the weapons/mutations go, they really seemed to have a limitless imagination. The whole film is laced with really strange, twisted shit that could have easily come out of the strangest David Lynch films. My personal favourite is the random advert for the new-improved-and-cute self-harming razorblade sported by inappropriately happy Japanese schoolgirls. Dark shit indeed.
I don't think I do the film justice either. I only watched it last night and maybe not everything has sunk in yet, but if there is one thing to be told about this film is that it keeps topping itself. Where other films of this kind go WHAM!!! and then either dwindle or stagnate, this one goes wham!!!Wham!!!WHAM!!!WHAM, MOTHERFUCKER, WHAM, WHO'S YOUR DADDY BITCH?!
To cut a long story short, if you like strange, gory, unlikely and fucked-up Asian films this is not so much a must-see as a your-life-was-up-until-now-meaningless. It is definitely a serious contender for the most fucked-up film I've ever watched.
Anyway, there's tons of blood spurting with great force out of severed limbs and various other gashes and cuts, taking the whole notion to new extremes (I will not spoil the last scene, I will not spoil the last scene). The visual effects people have really set a new standard in this niche of cinema and as far as the weapons/mutations go, they really seemed to have a limitless imagination. The whole film is laced with really strange, twisted shit that could have easily come out of the strangest David Lynch films. My personal favourite is the random advert for the new-improved-and-cute self-harming razorblade sported by inappropriately happy Japanese schoolgirls. Dark shit indeed.
I don't think I do the film justice either. I only watched it last night and maybe not everything has sunk in yet, but if there is one thing to be told about this film is that it keeps topping itself. Where other films of this kind go WHAM!!! and then either dwindle or stagnate, this one goes wham!!!Wham!!!WHAM!!!WHAM, MOTHERFUCKER, WHAM, WHO'S YOUR DADDY BITCH?!
To cut a long story short, if you like strange, gory, unlikely and fucked-up Asian films this is not so much a must-see as a your-life-was-up-until-now-meaningless. It is definitely a serious contender for the most fucked-up film I've ever watched.
