Movie Review: Tokyo Gore Police (2008)

I don't get to watch a lot of movies in the theaters (mainly because that sh*t is expensive, but you know that already), and when I do, I watch superhero movies with my friend Will and Dacarllo.  When I'm not with them, I use the Internet.  Now, I'm not out there torrenting like the rest of y'all.  I use other forms to get my movies--all of them legal.  Which brings me to my movie review subject: Tokyo Gore Police.

I watched it and I can truly say this movie lives up to its title, as all movies should.  The film (used loosely) is set in a futuristic Tokyo, some time after the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department and the Japanese Self-Defense Forces have been privatized and merged into the former.  Apparently, all Japan is now Tokyo...or not, I am unsure.  Also new to the mix are "Engineers"--a new type of life-form that causes mayhem in the streets and turns ordinary criminals into super-powered villains.
Enter Ruka (played by Eihi Shina of Audition fame), an expert "Engineer Hunter" with the Tokyo Metro Police, who hunts using only a samurai sword.  True to Japanese fantasy tropes, she weighs 90 pounds soaking wet and no family lineage is tied to the weapon to explain its unnatural ability to remain undamaged throughout the film as she fights hulking monsters.  She does her best and is celebrated in the ranks of the police department...but off-duty, she is a sad young woman who laments the loss of her policeman father years ago and makes cuts on her left arm for catharsis.  Only with the arrival of a particular Engineer monster does the story begin to evolve from a simple hack-and-slash videogame parody into something resembling a murder mystery.

- ATOMIC BOMB REFERENCE LOL -

There are a lot of counter-culture elements, sexual elements, dark humor (i.e., cutesy wrist-cutting devices that "make the blood sweeter"), and alternative lifestyle choices on display, which pale in comparison to the main event the movie puts forth.  When a person talks about themselves as an expert and says that "[Insert field of expertise here] is my middle name", they want you to believe that they were born with an intense knowledge of the field.  The same holds true for Tokyo Gore Police.  GORE is its middle name.

There were a lot of moments when I had to stop watching--not because I was gonna throw up, but...  Y'know what?  I'm lying.  Lying, and lying so hard.  I was gonna throw up so many times while watching, because I had just eaten dinner and there was so much gore for the sake of it.  Characters who could have just hit their opponents in the head with a bottle and stopped there, chose to jam the broken bottle into their opponent's face and use it to cookie-cut the flesh and bone from his skull.  What does that do? He dead!

The worst part of the movie for me was when I was watching it, I began to get used to the simulated carnage--the watery blood, the churned-up whatever they were using to simulate destroyed flesh, the ever-increasing attempts at body horror, etc.  Each special effect kept taking me out of the story.  At the end of it all, I was more concerned with the story than the poor tries to keep my attention with special effects.

Normally, I give Japanese films a pass when their story surpasses their special effects (STACY, Mechanical Violator HAKAIDER), but this movie is on its way to becoming the next Death Trance.  What's Death Trance, you ask?  Exactly--you probably don't know.  That's how bad it sucked.  I truly wish more time was spent developing the characterizations of Ruka and the bar owner--ESPECIALLY the bar owner.  Instead, we have a fine revenge story and a great fantasy world that is undercut by its own special effects.  For shame, Japan. For shame.

CHOICE CUTS:

Not even fazed by this.  That's how desensitized
I became to the special effects of this film.

• It's interesting to see how badly the Japanese were affected by the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II.  Every time they show a future, it's royally screwed up.
• There's all kinds of sick shit in this movie: chicks with alligator heads for legs, quadruple amputee sex slave assassins, segmented elephant penis cannon (I shit you not), strippers modified to look like snails (yup), hydrochloric acid breast milk, street-side executions, and blood that sprays so forcefully it can propel you through the air.  Can't get any sicker than that...
• OH GOD THE WATER LILY CHAIR--
• The black humor was a highlight, especially the silly commercials in the background.  The Tokyo Metro Police recruitment commercials reminded me of the "Would You Like To Know MORE?" propaganda clips in Starship Troopers--always a good thing.
• The idea that it looked like a key was a pretty cool idea--it unlocked a potential of the human body to do the stuff that an Engineer could.

Tokyo Gore Police gets a 5 out of 10.