DIRECTOR: Yoshihiro Nishimura
My hands hurt from clapping.
Tokyo Gore Police came onto my radar with a thundering splash of the red stuff. The trailer was five minutes of inspired madness that didn’t drop a single hint about the story but regaled me instead with a merry-go-round of insane sights. I saw a woman fighting with a chainsaw in each hand, a man with a giant gun in the place of his *whispers*…penis, nightmare half girl/half crocodile hybrids! And the blood! My god, there was so much BLOOD! It sprayed out of people as if they where a can of pop that had just spent a fortnight in a paint shaker. All it took was an elegant sword stroke and…PSHHHHHHH! I felt sticky after ten seconds.
Of course, that means I wanted to make sweet love to it.
Yet, deep down in my cynical heart, I knew there was no way the final product could deliver on everything the short flurry of images that had just been burned onto my cortex. Trailers are built on the bones of all the best parts of the film. They want us to see it after all. I was bound to be disappointed.
I was wrong, oh, I was so very wrong.
“In the near future...The Tokyo Police force has been privatized and incorporated. The new force has their hands full with a new type of genetically engineered mutant stalking the streets and brutally taking human lives. Luca, the top level officer at Tokyo Police has special law enforcement skills but her dark past makes her vulnerable. She is determined to hunt the mutant known as “Engineer” until the day she can find and destroy the mysterious “Key-Man”.”
Director/Screenwriter/Special Effects Creator Yoshihiro Nishimura doesn’t know the meaning of the word excess. He confuses it with “We need more schoolgirls who shoot acid out of their breasts!” and I love him for it. I’m honestly at a loss to reviewing the film without falling into a hyperbolic pit of babbling incomprehensibly praise and bowing till my knees don’t bend anymore. I can’t even tell you my favorite part. All I can do is stare off fuzzy eyed into the distance and groan
Do you need anything else?
“This movie isn’t for everyone” said Captain Obvious. The thing is called GORE POLICE for Ofler the Crocodile God’s sake! There’s going to be geysers of blood shooting everywhere. People will have their limbs chopped off. If you find that boring and receptive go and play in the street! If by chance your curly haired boyfriend dragged you to it, at least you can sit securely in the knowledge that this sucker has an actual story to hang its unhygienic set-pieces off of. I bought lead actresses Eihi Shiina journey to find her father’s murder. The direction over-the-top and cheap, but never comes off as lazy. He goes BAT-SHIT SWOOPING whenever the madness happen and keeps everything well framed the rest of the time. The lighting design pops off the screen in bright primary colors that fit the mood perfectly. The best compliment I can bestow on it is that I can see myself watching (and forcing loved ones, children and my monkey butler to watch against their will) the whole thing in one straight sitting. I never felt an intense urge to hit the fast-forward button which is a rarity with this type of flick. It’s by no means a nonstop rollercoaster due to a few unnecessary special effects show off moments (A fifteen minute side-plot that is nothing but an excuse to show off some weirdly designed freaks being the most obvious offender) but as a whole the going ons were creative enough to keep me interested.
The director said the film was shot in fifteen days. He said they did roughly 100 setups a day. I had a nightmare last night of the horror that would be birthed if he was given a real budget and loose to run wild. I imagine the end result was the end of the world. I hope they have seats available.
PSHHHHHHHHH!
P.S: In one of the hilarious Verhoeven (Director of Robocop) style Commercials that pepper the film, keep an eye out for Versus and Midnight Meat Train director Ryuhei Kitamura as the test-driver for the homemade Seppuku kit.
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