(Various spoilers follow)
For any fan of Asian cinema - Japanese films in particular - the early 2000s were a very special time. Takashi Miike pulled himself out of the much of V-Cinema (no-budget straight to video flicks) hell and became an international sensation, effectively patenting his unique brand of crazy and opening the flood gates for two-bit imitators and other similarly-skilled instigators. Of the latter category, Sion Sono's Suicide Club put him on the international map much like Miike's Audition, Dead or Alive, and Ichi the Killer did for him. Post-Suicide Club, Sono steadily honed his craft on the semi-sequel Noriko's Dinner Table, mind-bender Strange Circus, dark drama Hazard, and the much more commercial J-Horror entry Exte - or as commercial as a film about killer hair extensions can be.
Sono's career in film was a lock thanks to his 4-hour magnum opus Love Exposure, a love story whose main character is an upskirt photographer (yep). For me personally, Sion Sono had always been a director I liked. It wasn't until the one-two punch of Cold Fish and Guilty of Romance that he became a director I loved. Cold Fish is a deeply disturbing, ripped-from-the-headlines story about a middle-aged fish shop owner who gets in too deep with an older fish shop owner who also happens to be psychopath. Murder and mayhem ensue. Sono's follow up to this feel-bad epic was Guilty of Romance, also based on a true story involving murder, and chronicles the transformation of a mild-mannered housewife who tries her hand at prostitution before going full-blown nutso, becoming a vengeful monster. There's no happy ending here, as you can probably imagine.
(I must admit at this point that I have not seen Sono's next two films, Himizu and The Land of Hope, but I will most likely correct that mistake in the near future.)
The culmination of his entire career up to this point would definitely be the 2013 festival hit Why Don't You Play in Hell?, Sono's ode to filmmaking as told through the violent lens of a small time guerilla film club who convince/trick a real yakuza gang into letting them film their bloody war with their rival as part of their movie. Filled with cartoonish violence that would make Tarantino blush, it's obvious that after four dark and disturbing flicks in a row Sono just wanted to let loose and have fun. And that fun streak very much continues with Tokyo Tribe.
Tokyo Tribe is set in an unknown time in the near future, with all the districts of Tokyo divided and controlled by 23 different gangs who are collectively ruled over by a madman named Buppa. The closest approximation to "good guys" is the Musashino Saru tribe, who hang out at a diner called Penny's (using the Denny's font and colors) and rap about peace, love, and friendship. The Wu-Ronz tribe of Bukuro's leader, Merra, cannot stand the peaceful Musashino tribe and so he teams up with Buppa in an attempt to wipe them out. And since the cops are useless here (in the first scene, a rookie female cop tries her damnedest to stop a crime but ends up topless and groped by Merra), the Musashino have no choice but to try to unite the remaining tribes in a fight against Merra and Buppa.
The plot probably sounds a lot more confusing than it is, and thankfully they only show us a
small handful of the tribes, because having all 23 involved would be god damn ridiculous. And when I said before that the Musashinos rap about peace and love, what I meant to say was that Tokyo Tribe is, in fact, a hip hop musical. Most of the dialogue is rhymed to an ever-changing and never-ending beat, and it works quite well for the most part, particularly in the damn near 30 minute opening scene that follows the narrator through town as he sets up the story and the tribes and the tribes each take center stage and rap about themselves. Even more remarkable is how Sono executes a startlingly large number of one take shots involving large amounts of people, huge sets, complicated actions, and smooth camera movement. It's an impressively staged spectacle, to say the least, and it all has a very classic theatrical quality thanks to the vast and obvious (but not cheap-looking) "outdoor" sets and the flow of scenes from one to the next. I was a little surprised that a red curtain didn't close after certain sequences.
The cast is a mixture of actors and rappers, and that works a lot better than it has any right to. The most noteworthy are Shota Sometani as the MC (narrator), Yosuke Kubozuka as Buppa's shitty son Nkoi who uses living people painted white as furniture, and Nana Seino as a teenage girl with a secret who is responsible for many of the film's remarkably well done fight scenes. V-Cinema legend Riki Takeuchi portrays Buppa, and I am convinced that the gold suit and green dildo actually belong to him, because the man is insane. He spends most of his screen time groping women, contorting his face while rolling his eyes into the back of his head, vocalizing his dialogue as if he were some kind of demon, and stroking the aforementioned fake rubber dick. If I hadn't seen Takeuchi act like this numerous times before, I would've said that Sono had a lot to do with the character's idiosyncrasies, but I don't think he did because Takeuchi is truly a crazy person.
As you can imagine for a two hour hip hop musical, there is a chance of viewer fatigue, but Sono does his best to break things up with some fantastic fight scenes and a few genuinely
funny moments. The twenty minute battle royale that ends the film pulls out all the stops, and involves gunplay, swordplay, martial arts, break dancing, rap battling, go go dancers, a black dude who literally punches people into the sky, and Riki Takeuchi obliterating people with a gattling gun before getting sucked into a giant man-eating fan.
If any of this sounds like your jam, it probably is. If you long for the glory days of when Takashi Miike was cranking out insane movies like this in his sleep, Tokyo Tribe will thrill you. And while Miike has mellowed with age and inflated budgets, I sleep well at night knowing that the torch of Japan's rebel auteur is now safely in the hands of Sion Sono.
4 out of 5 floppy dildos
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