Why Don't You Play in Hell?

Beneath all my suffocating inhibitions, my inability to share my true feelings, my fear of doing what it is that I really want to do - there is a character somewhat akin to 'Hirata', in Sion Sono's 'Why Don't You Play in Hell?'. Here is a ridiculous and frankly insane character - a wannabe film director (and leader of the 'F**k Bombers' cinema club) who'll go to literally any length to realize his dreams and is not remotely discouraged by his complete lack of accomplishments over the past ten years. He's nuts, and yet my soul is frankly screaming for me to live my life with the same liberated, unashamed, energetic, joie d'vivre, that Hirata maintains in the face of it all... The spirit of the F**k Bombers!

Before Sion Sono was a filmmaker, he was part of a poetry collective called 'Tokyo GAGAGA', that took their poetry screaming into the streets. 'GAGAGA', Sono's explained, is the 'sound of the soul'. By that same token, I've often felt that Sion Sono's characters are the soul, personified: their actions are crazy, over-the-top, and usually comically violent - they're not realistic, normal characters - and yet I see my own soul realistically reflected in his characters, more strongly than anyone else's.

Like Kurosawa's 'Dreams', 'Why Don't You Play in Hell?' is autobiographical in the most uniquely and completely outlandish way. Hirata is Sono, from his early amateur filmmaking days, when he really did go round with his gang, calling themselves the F**k Bombers, playing Bruce Lee in the park, and being called an idiot by young children. That just about everything else in this movie is heavily fictionalized is pretty obvious, but just as Sono's characters don't reflect normal people, but capture their spirits, his story, if you consider it autobiographical, captures the spirit of his experience becoming a professional filmmaker. It's a movie about the spirit of movies, the spirit of filmmaking, and as Sono says, the 'love of 35mm'.

It's also about a yakuza turf war. And there's some romance as well: a meek boy falls in love with a girl after seeing her shove a piece of broken glass through another guy's cheek with her tongue, and shortly gets over his own shyness. The movie is a crazily-ridiculous breathlessly-paced action-comedy, capturing the same punk rock energy as Sono's Love Exposure, and it's his most polished-looking film yet. It's a lighter affair than most of the movies he made before - the psycho-horrors and the Fukushima-dramas - but it's no less good; it's thoroughly entertaining from start to finish, and especially, everything after the F**k Bombers finally cross paths with the yakuza is pure genius.

It's a movie that had me laughing, had me tapping my feet to the music (all written and composed by Sono himself), and had me grinning cheek-to-cheek the whole way through. And, like Sono's very best movies (Hazard, Love Exposure), it might have even inspired me, to loosen my inhibitions a little bit.

Insane, maddening, deranged, maniacal & batshit crazy from the very beginning to the very end, Why Don't You Play in Hell? is an intensely entertaining, extremely enjoyable & ridiculously fun cinema from Sion Sono that parodies a whole lot of things, is filled with frenzied performances & is undoubtedly last year's funniest film.

Why Don't You Play in Hell? concerns an amateur film crew that films anything n everything but has been waiting for its big break for over a decade. Their moment arrives when they are hired by a yakuza boss who, despite being in the middle of a feud with another yakuza clan, wants to finish the film starring his daughter as soon as possible in order to screen it for his wife's homecoming.

Written & directed by Sion Sono, the film opens with a brief ad segment & from then on, only gets crazier as the story progresses. It parodies many different films from Enter the Dragon to Kill Bill, its humour goes in all places, characters are raving lunatics, performances are wild, music is awesome but it's still got a lot of heart which makes it an enjoyable watch.

On an overall scale, Why Don't You Play In Hell? is a commendable work of quality despite its unhinged production, is sensibly composed even though its storyline goes completely bonkers & is at its bloodiest best during the final act. Hilarious as hell, an irresistible fun ride & easily the most amusing works of the year, this absolute riot of laughter & craziness comes highly recommended.

This film is an absolute riot. It's ridiculous, hilarious, brutally violent, and unapologetically strange. While this film will certainly not be for everyone, it was right up my alley. It's a film you can't take seriously, but you can have a lot of fun with. I absolutely recommend this film, particularly to fans of the films of Takashi Miike ("Audition", "As the Gods Will") or other Japanese cult directors. I will probably work my way through Sono's filmography until I make it to his four-hour epic, "Love Exposure".

The more movies of Sion Sono's that I see, the more I realize that he is one of the greatest artists working today. It's a big claim and I don't like to kiss ass, but the man is one of the few people working in entertainment and art that sees through the current state of the world and instead of criticizing it, he creates a stylish farce that inspires, entertains, and breaks our balls for believing in what we do, in the way we do. He challenges us in a playful way, that I believe is more compelling than the other artists that attempt to do the same thing through relating trauma in films that Hollywood seems to like concerning war, disease, rags to riches to rags, etc...

The world is absurd because of the people in it. The characters. Of course this life is a saga, a tragedy, an adventure, a romance, but above all it is a chaotic mess filled with jokes and gore. Filled with weirdos that are completely out of place on this planet and weirdos that are even more in place.

I love Sion Sono's films and this one in particular lives up to what I love about them. This film gives me hope in the world. I won't spoil it for you. It's about yakuzas clashing with a film crew. It's about me and you. It's about you and me. Yakuzas and a film crew.

Fate causes the paths of a guerrilla film crew and two feuding Yakuza clans to clash for the second time in ten years in this outlandish comedy from 'Suicide Club' director Sion Sono. The movie initially feels like a twisted version of 'Bowfinger' or 'Cecil B. DeMented' as the young guerrilla filmmakers heartlessly intrude on the Yakuza madness to get money shots. In between the violence, there are also some moments of macabre beauty too, such as a young girl in a white dress sliding through a sea of blood, and things get more complex as the story progresses and jumps to the present. Deliciously weird and wacky as the film is, it takes a long time for the paths of the protagonists to cross once again, and the film feels way too long. It is, however, the midsection that needs trimming (especially a romance) as the carnage-heavy finale is glorious with the guerrillas' insensitivity to all the bloodshed at peak. The unemotional way in which they film all the action is uncanny; one gets a sense that they have completely lost all sense of distinction between reality and movie-making. The film has some solid performances too, particularly from Jun Kunimura as a much-feared Yakuza boss whose daughter used to be in toothpaste commercials, and Shinichi Tsutsumi as the other Yakuza boss who became fixated on Kunimura's little girl at an age that many would consider creepy. Fumi Nikaidou (as the adult daughter) also keeps singing her toothpaste jingle. It is that kind of delirious, unconventional comedy if one is in the mood for something decidedly different.