Name: Tokyo Gore Police (2008)
IMDb: link to Tokyo Gore Police page
Genres: Action, Horror SFF. Country of origin: Japan
Cast: Eihi Shiina as Ruka, Itsuji Itao as Keyman, Yukihide Benny as Tokyo Police Chief, Jiji Bû as Barabara-Man, Ikuko Sawada as Independent Bar Owner, Cay Izumi as Dog Girl, Keisuke Horibe as Ruka's Father, Shun Sugata as Tokyo Police Commissioner, Tak Sakaguchi as Koji Tanaka.
Directed by: Yoshihiro Nishimura. Written by: Yoshihiro Nishimura, Maki Mizui, Kengo Kaji
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| Ruka |
The initial tableaux:
An 'engineer' is a mutant/sick person who can convert wounds to weapons. The police in near future Japan are privatized, and wear armor that has some superficial resemblance to samurai armor of the past.
Ruka is an 'engineer hunter' in the police; that is, a skilled killer who can find an engineer's weak spot faster than the engineer can kill her. Ruka's self-cutting is revealed in flashbacks and just before her first fight with an engineer. Her birthday party (plus congratulations for 50 engineer kills) was pure camp.
Those are the 'good old days' at the beginning of the film.
Delineation of conflicts:
The engineers and the police are clearly at war. The engineers raid police headquarters and kill several cops. The battle frenzy heightens.
Ruka's allegiance to the police cause is converted to zeal for revenge after the police kill her one true friend in the world, and she learns from a strong engineer (Key Man) the true fate of her father.
Resolution:
Ruka beheads the four cops who killed her friend, and the fight is on.
The ultimate fight is between Ruka and her second father, the head of the police, the man who ordered her father killed. Unfortunately, this was also one of the most ridiculous and badly filmed stage fights I've ever seen.
One line summary: Ruka is out to avenge her father's death at the hands of crooked cops; so is her adversary, Key Man.
Statistics:
Cinematography: 2/10 Often dark with insufficient contrast and soft focus. Framing mistakes, jumpy camera work. Panning with blur. Blood on the lens, too many times. The blood here is Texas Longhorn orange; that is, not very red. Yellow and orange filters applied for no apparent reason.
Sound: 2/10 Weak. The incidental music is often amateurish in composition, poor in quality, and hollow sounding. At times it seems the actors are not miked properly. There was a significant number of lines spoken in Japanese that had no related English subtitles. This did not help following the plot.
Acting: 1/10 There are too many actors with total lack of affect: stone faced and silent without much body English. The protagonist is the prime example. Also, her fight movements are often out of synch by one to five seconds, as if reacting to off-camera cues after failing to execute.
Screenplay: 1/10 Gallons of blood sprayed, followed by zero landing on actors' clothes. This repeated a dozen times or so. Acquaintance with the laws of physics and logic is out the window. Given that, we're down to special effects and character motivation. The SFX were really bad, so motivation would have to drive the plot. Motivation is fairly well lost as well. One segment goes to another with little or no explanation. The plot is more of an archipelago than a road from here to there.
Special Effects: 1/10 Cheesy blood spatter. Enough blood to float small boats. Badly done fake chopped off body parts. Blood pipes made obvious when a limb or neck or finger is sliced off.
This is supposed to be Tokyo Shock, or live action blood-spatter anime.
As a gore-fest and gross-out fest, this was high on quantity, but low on quality. Bloodletting, blood spray, body violations, public groping, eating insects, multiple commercials for self-cutting tools; the game 'remote control exterminate', breasts sliced in half, then stitched together with thick cords; using a freshly cut off head as a soccer ball; a golden shower, a penis cannon, pointless murder after pointless murder while the cops are on the rampage, acid spraying breasts, a flying-fist gun. Too much, and too much of it hokey.
Final Rating: 1/10 Three black holes for cinematography, special effects, and acting.
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