Tetsuo the Bullet Man (2009)

[Ghoul]

cukamoto se vratio na tecuo teritoriju - jupiii!

avaj, prvi rivjui nagoveštavaju da je film možda prvi ćorak u inače stelarnoj karijeri velikog malog japanca!

varajeti je nježniji, ali i površniji - više me brine ovaj drugi rivju, dole, koji mi deluje prilično to the point!

varajeti kaže:

Tetsuo the Bullet Man
(Japan)
By LESLIE FELPERIN

A Tetsuo Group presentation of a Kaijyu Theater, Asmik Ace Entertainment production. (International sales: the Coproduction Office, Paris.) Produced by Shinichi Kawahara, Masayuki Tanishima.
Directed by Shinya Tsukamoto. Screenplay, Tsukamoto, Hisakatsu Kuroki.

With: Erik Bossick, Akiko Monou, Shinya Tsukamoto, Stephen Sarrazin, Yuko Nakamura, Tiger Charlie Gerhardt.
(English dialogue)


Twenty years after making his breakout cult hit, "Tetsuo," and 17 years after its sequel, "Tetsuo II: Body Hammer," multihyphenate filmmaker Shinya Tsukamoto busts out the big guns again with "Tetsuo the Bullet Man." Contempo-set pic doesn't bring much new to the half-man-half-machine concept, but with its delirious editing and eardrum-crunching soundtrack, it punches above its weight and musters a certain retro charm with its old-school effects, all done on about one-hundredth of the budget of a "Transformers" movie. Fans of the franchise will have this in their sights and show support, but crossover potential looks iffy.

Half-American, half-Japanese Anthony (Erik Bossick) has always strived to keep a tight rein on his anger by singing nursery rhyme "Hush, Little Baby" whenever he's agitated, a trick his mother taught him before she died. Now a salaryman in Tokyo, he lives with his wife, Yuriko (Akiko Monou), and son, Tom (Tiger Charlie Gerhardt).

But when a mysterious driver (helmer Tsukamoto himself) deliberately murders Tom by running him over, Anthony starts to get in touch with his anger in a way most bereavement therapists wouldn't approve of: His body begins to turn into black, living metal, sprouting weapons and all kinds of spiky bits. A huge Gatling gun, for instance, grows out of his chest, which comes in handy when a bunch of uniformed hitmen try to kill him.

Turns out Anthony's father, Ride (Stephen Sarrazin), a former biochemist, is to blame, a fact Anthony uncovers by digging around in his dad's basement, where he makes an even more alarming discovery about his late mom.

Thesps deliver their lines entirely in English, and often sound stilted in the quieter moments, but hey, that kind of goes with the machine-people theme. On the other hand, the script's emphasis on familial, especially parental love makes for a gentler, kinder Tetsuo movie, entirely lacking in the creepy sexual dimension of the first two pics.

Co-editors Tsukamoto and Yuji Ambe show nimble, frenetic fingers in the editing suite as they slice and dice the action sequences and the pic's frequent trippy interludes into thousands of cuts, all the better to distract from the lack of sets. Sound design pushes the dial well past 11, adding undeniable visceral impact.


Camera (color, HD), Tsukamoto, Takayuki Shida; editors, Tsukamoto, Yuji Ambe; music, Chu Ishikawa; production designer, Tsukamoto; costume designer, Mari Sakura; sound (Dolby Digital), Hirokazu Kato. Reviewed at Venice Film Festival (competing), Sept. 4, 2009. Running time: 79 MIN.


a tvič kaže:

by Todd Brown, September 5, 2009 10:00 AM
Asia, Cult, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Venice Film Festival 2009
Tetsuo3.JPG
Brace yourself for disappointment.  As painful as it is to say, Shinya Tsukamoto's Tetsuo The Bulletman is far indeed from being the triumphant return to the iconic world that created a rabid cult around Tsukamoto.  Worse than that, not only does this latest incarnation of Tetsuo fail to live up to his predecessors but he also represents the first, one hundred percent, abject failure of Tsukamoto's career.

The first of Tsukamoto's films to be shot in English - part of the problem but far from the most significant - Tetsuo The Bulletman stars Eric Bossick as Anthony, a young white man born and raised in Tokyo by his researcher-father who is now raising a young family of his own.  It should be a happy time in Anthony's life but his wife is plagued by crippling anxiety, anxiety that largely prevents her from leaving their home and centers on recurring nightmares around a horrible fate for the pair's young son Tom.

Tragically, those dreams turn out to be prophetic and Tom is cruelly run down by a car in the street.  Anthony tries to hold it together, much to the anger of his wife who wants to see him fly into a rage.  And Anthony does eventually lose the firm grip he has on his emotions, the slide into anger triggering a bizarre transformation within his own body, Anthony transforming into a strange metallic monster much to the delight of the strange man - Tsukamoto himself - who ran down Tom and continues to taunt Anthony from a distance.

The first question people had of this new Tetsuo film was why english?  And the answer is the obvious one: it's an attempt to play to the international market.  But it's one that won't work.  Not because the actor's aren't good but because Tsukamoto has all of them deliver their lines in a bizarre rhythm and heightened style that obviously owes much to the director's own history in experimental theater but thoroughly prevents us from being able to tell if they're any good or not.  They could be good.  They could be horrible.  But working under the strictures laid down by their director - and I have no doubt whatsoever that he got exactly what he wanted here in terms of performance - nobody in the audience will ever know.

Much more significant are flaws in the script itself and the shooting style.  Previous Tetsuo films took much of their power from their ambiguity.  They were all about impulse and raw emotion spilling over, the script's vague enough to allow the audience to read their own interpretations of what is happening and why into the proceedings.  Not so here, Tsukamoto not only giving in to the urge to explain too much but also doing an exceptional poor job of it, dipping into entirely unearned melodrama territory in devastatingly haphazard fashion.  Not only is the why of Anthony's transformation entirely unsatisfying but it is delivered in such poor fashion that even the greatest treatise ever written on man-machine fusions wouldn't have done the trick.

Compounding the script problems are Tsukamoto's choice to shoot in high def digital while employing remarkably shoddy - and entirely unconvincing - special effects work.  Tetsuo films in the past have been marked by their grit, the grainy shooting style perfectly matching the visceral transformations and allowing the audience to buy into Tokyo as an alternate world where this could really happen.  The ultra-high crispness of digital - even when framed and lit in vintage Tsukamoto style - simply undoes this effect.  Everything is too clean, too defined and Tokyo simply looks like Tokyo.  Even worse, the shift to high definition badly exposes the special effects.  Anthony doesn't look like metal, he looks like rubber.  He wobbles.  The texture is all wrong.  Rather than turning in to a beast of organic metal, Anthony simply becomes a lump of unimpressive latex.

An enormous disappointment, the only way Tetsuo The Bullet Man could ever be considered a success is if Tsukamoto's goal in making it was to prevent anyone from ever asking him to make another.

tizer možete videti ođe:
http://www.quietearth.us/articles/2009/09/07/Teaser-for-Shinya-Tsukamotos-TETSUO-THE-BULLET-MAN#extended

[Meho Krljic]

Uh, uh, uh... ne zvuči obećavajuće... melodramski akcenat PLUS superkrisp hi-def zaista deluju kao recept za propast. The Nightmare Detective je imao naznake da se Tsukamoto kreće u ovom smeru ali deluje kao da je ovde to konačno realizovano... Hajde, da ne udaramo u plač prerano, ali...