Tokyo Gore Police

Based on his own 50-minute short film from '95 (intriguingly entitled Anatomia Extinction), Yoshihiro Nishimura almost puts the viewer, or more aptly reviewer, in a box with a nearly 2-hour flight of fancy called Tokyo Gore Police. One might either watch and be completely bored (admittedly I was early on), be amused, or relax into a drooling, pie-eyed state of fan-boy wonderment.

As an understudy of sorts of the great Sion Sono and with his own brand of art direction on full display, Nishimura's characters can just as easily relay/portray the psychosexual fancies of the progressive acrotomophilist as they can the revenge driven nihilist; both arenas well represented in several character forms. I'd venture to say most would invariably see similarities in this film to the films he himself is linked to, in the production sense, and maybe even a few other well known titles.

A bit cartoonish, an understatement maybe, the bombastic opening scene initiates us to the film's underdeveloped but adequate familial revenge core which pits a Charles Bronson-like super cop named Ruka (Odishon's infamously spurned Eihi Shiina) as daughter to a slain Tokyo police officer. Having witnessed her father's murder, she's fated to the specialized team within the department that exclusively fight so-called "engineers" - purpose-driven super-criminals who's DNA has been altered in ways that would make a certain Paul Verhoeven film scurry away with tail firmly tucked. Ruka's ultimate goal being to find the man who iced her father while tracking a loose link to the murder which may or may not flow through the underground Tokyo fetish scene. That's not to say it comes anywhere near the previously eluded to film's plausibility; a half-human robot cop is ho-hum compared to prostitute legs mangled to transform into crocodile jaws. Indeed. Speaking rarely and posing often, the stoic mutilateur Ruka sheds much blood with sword and chainsaw alike, with the skill and poise of a military-trained ninja.

An ungodly amount of dialogue comes by way of narration, most notably Ruka's, and that fact doesn't necessarily hurt, but it is fatiguing at times. And so what if Eihi doesn't quite exude reprisal poster girl Uma Thurman-esque energy - no role really escapes Nishimura's overpowering amplitude - witness characters embodied by Takashi Shimizu, Mame Yamada, and Sion Sono, among others, being similarly muted.

Tokyo Gore Police's roots may be subversive, I mean come on, the title Anatomia Extinction alone - yet there's more of a contemporary slant to TGP that's subversive enough; expressly, morality and social stratification. A privatized, militarized police force responds to the uncontrollable crime wave hitting Tokyo which leads to the aforementioned state response. Whichever came first, a most vicious circle it is to be sure. Real world parallels are unavoidable and surely intentional. The balance of the differing runtimes are undoubtedly home for more the most insane bloodletting you've ever saw. Now don't be alarmed, the movie is far from political screed as some may ascribe, but as far as it is, it fades in and out as an equal mix of comedic barbs and tired cold war era generics. This is strictly mondo fantasy post-neorealist action folks. Nishimura himself shouldn't convince me otherwise.