Horror Extreme Movie Catalog

Shinya Tsukamoto ranks up there with the most important Japanese filmmakers working today, along with Miike, Sion Sono, and still prolific Kitano. "Bullet Ballet" is a return to the dark imagery and grainy, video-like metropolis-scape of "Tetsuo: The Iron Man", only more realistic and familiarized--this is the cyber-punk that could exist in the back alleys of your own town.

A man obsesses over getting a gun after his girlfriend kills herself with one she was holding for a gang. Specifically, he wants her gun, but a gun of its same type will do. Meanwhile, the gang and he keep running into each other, with violent and abusive results, until eventually his obsession with the gun and their need to protect themselves from the violence of the city merge their paths into violent mayhem--and stark, abject beauty.

The sexual overtones of the movie are quite obvious, while the stated theme of "man's need to create violence" is a little more subtle. One thing I really liked about this movie is that although it's quite stylized, like most maverick Asian entertainment out there, Tsukamoto shows a real grasp of montage and experimental filmmaking on top of the narrative continuity needed to direct the audience's emotions as much as compel their intellect. Some of the most memorable uses of back-projection, intercutting, and hand-held cinematography are used with a movie that is not afraid to take a contemplative moment aside to build real tension. It's not just eye-candy, this one. Of course, neither is anything else of Tsukamoto's I've seen, but sometimes a movie is so well-done it bears worth mentioning.

A minor aside, one that has no real impact on the rating or receipt of this film in whole: that one chick who eventually ends up commiserating with the protagonist was scary thin. It was almost an abject horror unto itself to see her down to bra and underwear, looking like a skeleton. Because of the nature of the imagery, I don't know if the choice in that actress was intentional for the body-type or if she was the only one he could get.

--PolarisDiB

Bullet Ballet (Shinya Tsukamoto, 1998)

There's something wonderfully dynamic about Shinya Tsukamoto's movies, a feeling that even when everything on camera is still, there's a great deal of motion in the background, that if the camera were turned just a few degrees, everything would be flying along at warp speed. It's a wonderful effect, almost to the point where I'm starting to like Tsukamoto better than Takashi Miike. Almost, mind you, but Bullet Ballet goes a long way towards drawing the two of them even.

As the film opens, Goda (Tsukamoto) discovers that his finacee has committed suicide, shooting herself. Goda becomes obsessed with handguns, and his obsession is sharpened when a gang of thugs, led by the ruthless and beautiful Chisato (8½ Women's Kirina Mano), starts preying on Goda. His fascination with guns, and his fantasies of revenge, become inevitably entangled, even as he finds himself more and more attracted to Chisato.

As with all of Tsukamoto's movies, this is not a film you want to watch if you're just looking for an easy, linear, turn-your-brain-off romp. There is a great deal under the hood here, as with even the most mainstream of Tsukamoto's films, which is is emphatically not. Still, it is an action film (or, at least, a parody of one), and so sometimes it feels like that. But keep paying attention, and you'll get a lot more out of it. Tsukamoto has a thing for trying to get inside the mind of what mainstream humanity would consider the deviant; in this case, it's Goda's all-consuming gun obsession. (Note that Tsukamoto's philosophy in this regard tends to bleed over when he works with other directors; witness, for example, Shimizu's Marebito, so far different from Shimizu's other films, or his multiple collaborations with Takashi Miike.) Goda is a fascinating character through and through, and while Chisato originally comes off (by design, I assume) as shallow and jaded, she, too, grips the viewer after a while. Tsukamoto's films are as much studies of character as they are violent fantasies, and this is what separates Tsukamoto from the bulk of thriller directors; there's meat on these bones. Bullet Ballet is a stunning example. ****