This is not anything like Iwai Shunji's "Shigatsu Monogatari", with its rather innocent themes and situations. In contrast, "Swallowtail Butterfly" jumps right in with stylized shots of destitute living, seedy shantytowns full of drugs and prostitution, and somewhat gratuitous violence. It was surprising that more than a third of the dialogue was in some form of English, seeing as how the Yentowns all seemed to come from the lower rungs of their respective non-English-speaking countries (i.e., those not able to attend English classes at the grade school and higher level), excepting of course the American boxer. How ironic that they managed to speak better English than most Japanese who have taken several years of English in school. The non-English-speaking white guy was an interesting touch, as was the casting of Yosuke Eguchi as an ethnic Chinese gangster. By far the most confusing characters were Yamaguchi Tomoko and Watabe Atsuro, cast as some sort of foreign (US?)-trained counter narcotics operators. Obviously, such a "black" unit would not be politically viable in Japan, hence the presence of an American-accented squad leader and the exclusive use of (bad) English between Yama-chan and Watabe-kun. I realize that their main objective was to terminate Rianki's counterfeiting ring, but why would they do it by helping Yentowns scam millions of yen from cash machine owners? Don't even get me started on the impossibility of taking out a target on a moving train. Surely, Iwai Shunji's watched "La Femme Nikita" too many times, but even Luc Besson wouldn't have one of his characters pull off such an impossible objective. Overall, the movie was depressing, enlightening, sad, disturbing, and in some ways entertaining (Tomo-chan's scene with the anti-tank weapon was immensely funny). Did i like it? Well, yes.
