House Of Flying Daggers House Of Flying Daggers
Jul
13
2008

FANTASIA Report:  TOKYO GORE POLICE Review

Posted by Todd Brown at 8:30am.

Posted in Film & DVD Reviews , Cult, Horror, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Asia, Fantasia 2008, NYAFF08.

The near future.  Tokyo’s police force has been privatized, the new private force authorized to execute justice on the spot.  The officers are both hated and feared but are a necessity in a world plagued by ‘engineers’, mutant creatures that generate powerful weapons from any significant wound on their body meaning that they become more dangerous the more that you fight against them.  The only way to stop an engineer is to cut out a strange key-shaped tumor that exists somewhere within each one of them, a task that falls to specialized sword wielding hunters within the police force.  And the leading hunter on the force is Ruka - played by Audition‘s Eihi Shiina - a beautiful, self destructive woman plagued by memories of her suicidal mother and slain father who has brought down fifty engineers to date.

From the same team that created The Machine Girl, Tokyo Gore Police is quite likely the most aptly titled film ever made.  The thing is positively saturated with blood, massive sprays of the stuff filling frame after frame of the film.  With its over the top effects and massive levels of splatter this thing is destined to become a classic among fans of the genre.  Like Machine Girl the effects are pleasingly squishy, based on real world latex prosthetics rather than CGI, and wildly inventive.  Where the two films part ways, however, is in the basic approach to the material.  While Machine Girl plays out largely tongue in cheek, Tokyo Gore Police takes its world very seriously.  There is no nodding and winking here, instead director Yoshihiro Nishimura sets out to create a sort of alternate future where these events, bizarre as they may be, actually make some sort of sense.  The end result is a sort of nightmare fugue, a swirling hallucination that just plunges farther and farther into depravity as it proceeds.

No doubt about it, Nishimura’s effects are what will draw most to the film but what holds it all together is Shiina’s performance.  A strange, otherworldly sort of presence, Shiina is one of the more distinctive and compelling actors working in Japan today and doesn’t appear on screen nearly often enough.  With a lesser performer at its heart Tokyo Gore Police would descend into camp but Shiina makes perfect sense here and gives the whole thing a strange sort of legitimacy.  She works well as an action heroine - fight scenes are well choreographed by Versus‘ Tak Sakaguchi - but more important are the self destructive urges that run throughout her character, her own life mirroring the tone of the Japan of the film.

Laced with sly social commentary - the television ads selling ‘cute’ wrist slicing knives and anti-hari kiri PSA’s are brilliant - and a surprisingly good cast Tokyo Gore Police has goals far beyond being a simple splatter picture.  Nishimura clearly has something to say and, low budget or no, his fusion of extreme violence of political satire can’t help but bring to mind Verhoeven’s Robocop and Starship Troopers.  The extreme visuals alone make Tokyo Gore Police a must for splatter fans, the added depth makes it a classic of the type.  Definitely recommended.

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Reader Comments

  1. kevin 06/22/2008 @ 1:09am

    Nice review. I think Shiina doesn’t get much work because she always looks bored.. her roles are limited to characters with no outward emotion. Same deal as Tak. They should date and have stone-faced babies.

  2. Dereks 06/22/2008 @ 3:29am

    Ahh, I was waiting for this review! Now, HOW, how can I get it??? Is there any DVD release announced?

  3. abjectnuttiness 06/22/2008 @ 5:59am

    Really good review!  Now I’m intrigued even more.  I watched Audition again this week with a buddy who hadn’t seen it yet.  It gets better every time I see it and I think Shiina definitely plays a big part in that.  So, agreed, she definitely doesn’t get enough work.

    Now I just have to actually FIND Tokyo Gore Police.  Though I was psyched to see Machine Girl show up in iTunes.... even if, for the most part, everybody hated it in the iTunes reviews (big surprise there).  It’s nice to find some of this stuff becoming more accessible to the masses.

  4. IEDParty 06/22/2008 @ 10:09am

    Yeah, definitely.

  5. san ku kai 06/22/2008 @ 10:14am

    Who cares about J-horror bleeding dead ...
    This next Wave of Japanese horror is out of this world and bloody fantastic !!!
    I Hope I get to see this on the big screen soon ... with the right audience ...
    Please please please !

  6. Todd Brown 06/22/2008 @ 11:01am

    It’ll be on R1 dvd before the end of the year, no worries there.

  7. abjectnuttiness 06/22/2008 @ 12:01pm

    Ah good to hear Todd.  Thanks!

  8. Gnolad 06/22/2008 @ 1:13pm

    Thank you for a great review. I will try to catch this on import DVD when it’s released.

  9. Ard Vijn 06/22/2008 @ 1:18pm

    I hope Rotterdam is paying attention when scouting titles for the next festival. Fingers crossed!

  10. AladdinSane 06/22/2008 @ 6:15pm

    Sat down on Friday to begin watching nine films in two days at NYAFF. The last film of the marathon was Tokyo Gore Police. Everything that Onechanbara fails to be on Friday Tokyo Gore Police made up for it ten fold Saturday. I just think the crowd couldn’t tell if they should laugh or just pick their jaws up off the floor. There were so many moments of just amazement that they thought this crazy shit up it would be impossible to list them all. It’s the most fun genre film I’ve seen in a very long time.

  11. kungfueurotrash 06/22/2008 @ 10:29pm

    I’d break a leg to watch a premiere of this film…

  12. soulmining 07/14/2008 @ 4:10am

    Anyone in or around London on Saturday 23rd August can catch Tokyo Gore Police showing at midnight at the Odeon West End as part of FrightFest… smile

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