Bullet Ballet

Goda seems to be having a pretty good life. He is a successful television commercial maker who seems to be quite and demand. Also he has had a steady relationship with his long time girlfriend for ten years. However, one night while he is out having a drink, his girlfriend commits suicide. It soon becomes evident that his girlfriend had close ties with the underworld and had somehow acquired a pistol which she used to end her life.

Although suffering a horrible tragedy, Goda seems to be in control of himself, and his co-workers seem to think that he is actually doing better despite the fact that his girlfriend committed suicide. However, this is not quite the case. Goda is seething underneath, wondering how his girlfriend got a hold of the pistol and he soon becomes obsessed with acquiring the gun like the one his girlfriend used to kill herself. This draws Goda into the underworld himself and he seeks the help oh yakuza members and foreign crime elements to attain his desired possession. However, because he is unsuccessful, Goda makes his own gun.

While creating his gun, Goda intentionally encounters members of the gang his girlfriend had been associated with. These members include Goto, a gang kid with long sideburns who is looking to enter the business world, Idei a club owner and leader of the gang who has a serious acid habit, and Chisato a short haired, leather skirt sporting waif who acts as bait for johns whom the male gang members beat up and rob. However, it is interesting to note it seems Goda has had run ins with the gang before and he even has a scar where Chisato bit him quite deeply when he pulled her away when she came dangerously close to being hit by a subway. These characters develop quite an odd relationship with each other in only ways Tsukamoto could create.

This is quite a good film and Tsukamoto does a wonderful job of being Goda. He seems far more dangerous than the gang members and almost emotionless at some points. Mano Kirina is also quite sexy in a sleazy kind of way. This film was quite difficult for me at some moments though because I could not quite figure out how the threads were woven together at some moments, but the film is well worth a watch or two.

Tsukamoto is like a spiritual brother to Cronenberg. The grotesque body horror that accompanies most of their films. Their purpose to replace sex (in the classical sense) with a metaphorical equivalent. In Tetsuo it was mechanical, in Tokyo First it was violent punches and in this one there is that weird gun and bullets (of course)...that also replace war and death / suicide.

Tsukamoto is, however, a more rebellious soul. A soul less prone to the parameters of conventional filmmaking. More experimental and more cryptic in a more Japanese sense.

This is not ment to be enjoyable, it is ment to satisfy an already tormented viewer with more of what they already feel, angst, fear, uncertainty, inner violence.

After the amusing opening credits, playing with the title's two words, this takes an immediate dark and dangerous turn and doesn't stop till the end. The lovely Kirina Mano shines like some angelic figure amidst the grime, the violence and the mayhem. But even she has a very mean streak and it is clear that these are not the colourful, welcoming streets of Tokyo we love, these are the back alleys teeming with bored punk kids desperate to emulate or at least impress the raging yakuza. Shot in stark b/w, there is confusion as to quite what is going on at times but there is such a drive and confidence to the filming that there is no doubting that the director knows where the ride lead even if even some of the participants are unsure. Dirty, dynamic and disturbingly dark drama set in the underbelly of the backstreets of Shibuya(?) in the 1990s

Shinya Tsukamoto's unique vision is fairly amazing. I thought the better known "A Snake Of June" was brilliant and provocative, but this film is also, even though they are hardly about the same thing. Mr. Tsukamoto, who produced, edited, wrote and directed this, also stars in it as Goda, a commericals director whose girlfriend has killed herself with a gun. Goda's life and reason unravels, and he obsesses with finding a gun. He falls in with a gang of disenfranchised youth in Tokyo's Shibuya (the Harajuku district, which is next to Shibuya in Tokyo, is a prime place for these young people still) and gets involved in a gang fight as well as other violence. The film was shot in black and white, which was an excellent idea, since the film is too stark to be in color. This is not for casual film goers, but fans of Tarantino and Darren Aronofsky's work will like this. Mr. Tsukamoto has created a film about the lure of non-redemption and brilliant shoots it almost documentary style. The other characters, especially the brooding model like Kirina Miao as Chisato, are also good, but this is Mr. Tsukamoto's film. Obtain the DVD, which has an interview with him taken years later in which he answers certain questions about the film. It is a candid view of his process and idea. This movie is very in your face and its effectiveness in spreading the message of violence and hopelessness is fascinating. I highly recommend it.

It's not that no one else does what Shinya Tsukamoto does, but that when he's at his best, nobody does it better. All the common staples of his style are here: loose, frenetic camerawork; sharp editing to produce rapid successions of imagery; industrial music. Add to this the black and white presentation of a very independent production, and the stage is set.

If Tsukamoto's boorishly over the top sequels to 'Tetsuo: The iron man' proved anything, it's that the filmmaker does his best work when he begins with the simplest idea and develops his story from there. In the case of 'Bullet ballet,' that means a man's obsession with obtaining a gun following his partner's suicide. From that premise comes a movie about a person living on the edge, and accidentally becoming involved in still more seedy matters in the process. By all means, it's a concept with great potential. I'm not convinced that the result here was entirely successful, but it's duly engaging, and compelling enough to mostly hold our attention.

Tsukamoto is a capable actor, and inhabits the lead role with strong range and nuance to realize the protagonist's anguished desperation. The writing of other characters is less discrete, but the rest of the cast are suitable nonetheless. I think each individual scene is composed and executed very well, with varying moods and temperaments across them all. I'm less enthused about the overall narrative, as it seems too disordered and busy for its own good. There are sound ideas here, both the central focus and the misadventures that the main character becomes involved in. But I feel like 'Bullet ballet' would be so much better if it were more concentrated on protagonist Goda and his flailing effort to acquire a weapon and end his own life. The more that the film spins out to weave in the thread of gang warfare, the thinner and weaker it becomes, especially since the two elements as they are written fail to converge with the cohesiveness they could have. The movie is full of solid possibility, but the rendition of the tale that we get just doesn't quite cut it.

With that said, I don't think this is bad. In fact, I'm inclined to say it starts out very strong, and even as the component parts fail to wholly integrate, I think the ending is pretty well done, too. The real issue is a floundering midsection that's a little all over the place, and just not tightly centered enough to totally work. More time spent developing the screenplay would have gone a long way. Still - while in part I wonder if I'm not being too kind as it is, more so than not I liked 'Bullet ballet.' It's far from perfect, but tells an engrossing story while refraining from the utmost bombast that bring down some of Tsukamoto's other pictures. This isn't necessarily a movie for someone who doesn't already appreciate the filmmaker's style, but for anyone open to it, it's a fair watch. Don't go out of your way, and keep the indelicacies firmly in mind, but if you happen to come across 'Bullet ballet,' it's not a bad way to spend 85 minutes.