stroggos

I love my fair share of B-movie flicks, and the indie horror scene has a lot of potential, with many young film makers to look out for. I'd be curious to see what this director comes up with next, as there is a lot of potential, but overall, the whole thing is really trite. The one thing he really needs to learn is how to direct his actors, which come across as terribly wooden here. The story is something that we have really seen before, it's thoroughly unoriginal. Also, the whole thing is not as violent as I'd like my B-movie horrors to be. For a lot of the film I was quite bored.

I like Scott Adkins, but I'd rather have him without golden teeth. There's some descent action in here, as you'd expect from a Scott Adkins flick. But since they are going for the "pub brawl" style of fighting, you don't get to see all that much in terms of incredible stunts or boxing. And I gotta say, while Adkins is a great fighter and has a lot of charisma and screen presence in his Boyka films, he's not that great of an actor to pull a film like this that largely depends on his storytelling. The relationship between Adkin's character and his brother, is quite underdeveloped, and so I ended up caring very little for what was going on. Fights are great and that, but they need to serve a purpose in a powerful story where you actually care about the people fighting. The whole thing tries to be edgy, and at times it seems to want to be funny, Guy Ritchie gangster flick style, but it ends up being pretty mediocre.

This film displays such great craftsmanship! It looks absolutely gorgeous, with Tokyo being set in brooding lights, and some amazing camerawork and edits. There's a few multi-character tracking shots that must've taken ages to rehearse! And some of the fighting is really well done.

I don't like rap at all, but I really liked it here, as it was something unique, something I have never seen before in a film. At times, nearly every single line in this film is rapped. So if you don't like that, you're going to hate the film. But to me, the music was really what held the whole thing together.

The whole thing has high production values, but it often goes for the look of a B-movie. This is great, fitting with Sion Sono's "guerrilla style", highlighting the fact that you are watching something edgy and underground. There's A LOT of sexual language in there, and the whole thing is at times deliberately exploitative ... and I can see that this would throw many people off. A lot of the exploitative aspects of the film are meant to be tongue-and-cheek, but Tokyo Tribe one is definitely not for viewers who want to see something that is "politically correct".

Altogether, a truly unique vision, something that I have never seen before.