Tokyo Gore Police (2008)

Ruka (Eihi Shiina, really making that stone-faced woman with a sword thing work) - when she's not busy cutting herself - is an especially effective member of a future Tokyo Police Force. Orphaned at a very young age, she's following in the footsteps of her father who himself had been a cop killed on duty. She is especially adept at slaughtering the so-called "engineers", serial killers/berserkers from whose wounds grow new and interesting killing devices and who can only be killed by destroying a strange key-shaped tumor hidden somewhere inside their bodies. Also, she rocket jumps.

Over the course of the film, Ruka learns the truth about the death of her father and gets infected with the engineer tumor key thingy herself. Oh, and she cuts quite a few people into pieces (queue very Japanese showers of the most Japanese looking blood).

 

Well, well, well, Tokyo Gore Police is not the perfect movie its trailer did promise, but it's still a mighty fun film when you are in the right frame of mind for it and are not afraid of lots and lots of interesting human and not-so-human bodily fluids (if you are, might I inquire what kind of business you have with a film having the word "gore" in its title?).

It's directed by The Machine Girl's special effects head Yoshihiro Nishimura (with a few blackly funny fake advertisements by Noboru Iguchi himself thrown in) with a lot of enthusiasm and very little money, but with a palpable love for Japanese genre cinema, fight manga, and everything that is fun about fucking with people's bodies.

The film is not as grandly brilliant as its sister movie was though, it's missing a little that film's heart. This doesn't mean that it does not have one, as far as gore movies go, this is an extreme film, but not a truly nasty one. I have the feeling that Nishimura is interested in gore mostly for the coolness factor of transformation, the pretty colors and the funness of the fake and less to live out some sadist crap fantasies (and yes, this is the difference between this film and ninety percent of Western gore movies for me).

Speaking of fake, the film's budget obviously didn't stretch very far, so one has to live with gore of the rubbery sort. What the effects lack in realism they make up for with the kind of creativity Japanese pop culture is (in)famous for. I must say I prefer them this way.

Now would probably be a good time to talk about the script and the acting...Hm, the former is there, makes a certain amount of sense, has its heart in the right place, and does not torture us with much bad melodrama (what little is there works fine for me), so that's fine. The acting is fine as well, inasmuch it is needed it is done well enough - I'd even go as far as calling Eihi Shiina quite good, especially since Oneechanbara has finally taught me how much acting ability is actually needed for keeping her kind of pokerface. Also, I think I'm in love.

So, I'm happy, Tokyo is happy, and police privatization turns out not to be such a bright idea after all. If that's not a happy ending, I don't know what is.

 

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