Varied Celluloid

	A Bittersweet Life (2005)

Director:	Kim Ji-woon
Writers:	Kim Ji-woon
Starring:	Lee Byung-hun, Hwang Jeong-min and Kim Yeong-cheol

The Plot: Kim Sun-woo (Lee Byung-hun) works as an enforcer for his employer, president Kang, where he looks after his safety and investments. When Kang picks Sun-woo to look after his new, and young, girlfriend, it isn’t just for her safety. He wants him to keep an eye open and see if she’s sneaking off with another man. Sun-woo is told that if she is, he is to finish them both off. Soon after Sun-woo begins his mission, he discovers that the girl is indeed cheating on her powerful lover. Sun-woo then decides to confront the two but is unable to bring himself to actually commit the murder, so instead he asks that the two never see one another. However, Kang finds out eventually and seeks to kill Sun-woo. After capturing and torturing our leading man, Sun-woo eventually escapes the claws of his enemies and sets out on a path of vengeance!

	The Review

Kim Ji-woon is one of those filmmakers who has quickly jumped up to the top of every film-geek’s list of brilliant working directors, in a brief amount of time. A Bittersweet Life was certainly one of those films that helped put him on the map in the eyes of many people, but with titles such as The Good, The Bad and the Weird as well as A Tale of Two Sisters, this is a filmmaker who has solidified himself with genre film fans the world over. From the early part of this past decade, one of the biggest titles that seemed to jump out for many was A Bittersweet Life. It is ultimately a revenge tale told in a decidedly Kim Ji-woon fashion, as he takes genre staples and then fashions them into something that no longer resembles the original prototype. While A Bittersweet Life does have its issues, it tends to work far more than the interspersed moments where things do not click. A violent, somber and focused piece of work, Kim Ji-woon shows off his knack for action early on his career. As the movie plays out for us, the final half hour greatly resembles the ridiculous levels of action that John Woo often brought to the table within his prime years. Although the excitement and fun action pieces here would later be expounded upon, and perfected, with The Good, The Bad and The Weird, A Bittersweet Life still works incredibly well.

Although I will no doubt talk a lot about the action within this film, and no doubt there have been countless other reviews that have done the same thing, for the most part this is a very deliberately paced film that catches Kim Ji-woon at a transitional phase in his career. Although I have never been a tremendous fan of the film, one can definitely see the similarities between this film’s pacing and that of A Tale of Two Sisters. The restrained genre conventions and overall artiness throughout both films definitely seems reminiscent of one another. The difference here however is that A Tale of Two Sisters remained married to its conventions, while A Bittersweet Life doesn’t feel as tied down. It retains a flowing quality to it that takes us into several genre territories (action, revenge, arthouse, comedy) but refrains from committing. This could be one of the reasons it still remains such an interesting project for so many. It could also be due to the generally “cool” nature of the project, which displays Kim Ji-woon’s love of stylistic flourishes and attitude. The film often falls into these sequences that serve little purpose other than convincing us that Lee Byung-hun is both the coolest and baddest man on the planet, and to be honest these scenes make a pretty good argument for his case.

Korean superstar and well beloved man of action Lee Byung-hun is certainly the centerpiece for Kim Ji-woon’s film, and rightfully so. I sometimes like to re-imagine casting for big films and see if I can picture a film without its lead star. Like, could I imagine Platoon without Charlie Sheen? I actually could, and I could just as well see it being equally as successful. The reason, I imagine, is that such a role revolves entirely around the script and how the character was written down on the page. Some performances however rely on an actor with a notable charisma and chemistry with his fellow actors. Often you’ll find such roles in genre-cinema, which is why actors such as Chow Yun-Fat and Bruce Campbell have developed such rabid fan-bases. Lee Byung-hun’s turn here as the king of cool, Sun-moo, is also such a role. Although the script is well written and the performances by the rest of the cast are universally great, Lee Byung-hun’s quiet cool is what truly carries the movie. His character is introspective and quiet when necessary, but there is a ferocity that comes out with only a moment’s notice. He can go from brooding to a martial arts demon within only a moment, and although he has the face of a pretty boy he surely demonstrates himself as a capable badass when it comes to the fight choreography.

The choreography in both the gunfights towards the end of the film, as well as the fight sequences that are interspersed throughout the movie, are epic in their intensity. There are two notable sequences in particular that demonstrate both the complexity of the choreography, as well as the hero-worship based around Lee Byung-hun’s character. The first is at the very beginning of the movie where we watch Byung-hun escort a few gentlemen out of his employer’s hotel, with extreme force. The sequence is here solely to establish the imposing mystique of Byung-hun’s character, and although I may be simple minded, I admit that it works exceptionally well! The second sequence shows Lee Byung-hun taking his frustrations out, after having severe issues with his bosses wife, on several young street-racing punks who try to run him off the road with their sports car. The choreography isn’t your typical Tae Kwon Do work as one might expect either. The fight sequences seem to feature a variety of martial arts techniques, but the mix seems to best resemble a controlled style of brawling. As far as the choreography for the gun battles go, it is a slightly more realistic approach than John Woo, but still still remains smothered in style. There are some fantastic slow motion shots of dramatized violence as you might expect, but when Lee Byung-hun’s character sports a submachine gun with a banana clip, the damage it inflicts is tremendous and there is no amount of “style” that can soften this form of brutality.

	The Conclusion

I tend to wonder about the subtext of A Bittersweet Life, and whether or not it is all that important to actually understanding the film. My first instinct is to say that this is a generic action yarn with the generic revenge motif thrown in at the behest of inspiring more violence, but at the same time that seems to overlook how quiet and melodic the film is throughout the majority of its plot. A Bittersweet Life definitely shows a far different view on revenge than what Kim Ji-woon’s later I Saw the Devil would look to inspire, but I still genuinely enjoy the movie despite it being a case of style over substance. I tend to go back and forth on the rating, between a three and a four, but I am going to go with the higher rating for this one as I think many viewers will find the movie easy to get behind. Check it out, as there is no question to how entertaining the movie genuinely is.

	I Saw the Devil (2010)

Director:	Kim Ji-woon
Writers:	Park Hoon-jung
Starring:	Lee Byung-hun, Choi Min-sik and Jeon Gook-hwan

The Plot: Kyung-chul (Choi Min-sik, of Old Boy fame) is a sadistic serial killer who stalks the highways at night looking for fresh female victims. Out film begins with him finding a victim whose car has broke down on the side of the road, and we watch as he captures and ultimately kills the young woman. Unknown to Kyung-chul this young woman also happens to be the fiance of Kim Soo-hyeon (Lee Byung-hun, The Good, The Bad and The Weird), a special agent and general tough-guy. Soo-hyeon is soon on the hunt for Kyung-chul, but he doesn’t just want to kill the mass murderer. He wants to make him suffer. To do this, he will hunt him down and wound him for every attempt he makes at a new victim. He will butcher him at every turn until the killer simply can not stand the violence any more. Will Soo-hyeon succeed, or will Kyung-chul prove that his sadism can far outweigh that of this mad-detective?

	The Review

Director Kim Ji-Woon has been a familiar name amongst genre film fans ever since he wrapped on the incredibly popular A Tale of Two Sisters, but he has shown himself to be a versatile director who doesn’t simply stick to one facet of genre filmmaking. With his most buzzworthy title in recent years, The Good, The Bad and The Weird, he delivered a Manchurian/Korean action-western completely unlike anything cinema has ever seen before. A combination of outrageous and over the top action along with a sentimental passion for the American (and Italian) western, it created a magical concoction that most audiences simply couldn’t get enough of. Skip forward a few years later and we have Ji-Woon’s latest, which may not prove to be as popular as The Good, The Bad and The Weird has been, but it is only because of how unsettling and violent the feature is. Ballyhooed because of its violent and grim atmosphere, I Saw the Devil has unfortunately been labeled as a piece of Extreme cinema when in reality it is not. There are a few sequences that are laborious on the nerves, but generally the heart and soul of the movie keeps it far and away from the likes of Grotesque.

When you break the film down structurally, you have to admit that a lot of the things that I Saw the Devil has to say are not entirely unique. After having just finished my review for The Manhunt, it has dawned on me that there are almost as many anti-vigilantism films as there are pro-vigilante. The selfishness and pointlessness of the act has been discussed on so many levels that you wonder if we really need re-treads of this same old topic. As a viewer, it seems like a subject that we may not be overly enthused to see explored yet again, but sometimes the delivery is all that matters when it comes to a title such as this one. That is where I Saw the Devil comes in. What Kim Ji-Woon does is finds another way to say these things while also pushing us in the audience to actively participate in his film on an emotional level. Through his use of intense atmosphere, tension and even, yes, violence, he is able to create a film where the overall theme may not be considered the most unique in the long run but the delivery is surely something entirely its own in every sense. This is a genre-bending serial killer thriller, with faint touches of action cinema as well as general horror movie aesthetics. There is gore, there is action and there are even moments of humor. It is almost impossible to pin the movie down in one area however. This is something entirely of Kim Ji-Woon’s creation.

From the opening sequence, we know that something is different about this film. Kyung-chul (Choi Min-sik), our serial killer, is introduced to the audience face first as he peers into the window of a woman in distress on the side of the road. With her car broken down, he poses as a man trying to help as a way of getting close enough to capture the woman. The entire sequence is rather creepy from the start and simply having a vague idea for what this film will deliver, the entire audience should know at this point that something is terribly wrong with the situation and we should be on-guard. However, when the inevitable murder actually happened, I still felt a minor shock.This is a serial killer film after all. Surely the audience isn’t supposed to know the face and the identity of the killer right from the beginning, should they? And if they do, surely it shouldn’t be done in such a matter-of-fact fashion! I Saw the Devil categorizes itself as a character driven piece at this point and our adversarial relationship is then established. We then see Kim Soo-hyeon (Lee Byung-hun) go on his trail of revenge and as he does so, we see that he has also left behind his good nature. It is a cliche of sorts, but the character ultimately does become a monster in the process of trying to destroy a monster.

Kim Ji-Woon’s film delivers a passionate story that relies as much on its brutality as it does its tension-filled scripting. As the film progresses, the drama multiplies and the final act becomes a back and forth battle between these two characters. As we watch the two escalate their war against one another, the lack of compassion begins to really take its hold on the audience. The audience, if they can accept the film as a genre experimentation and allow themselves to be wrapped up in the characters, will find a very emotional piece of storytelling. The final shot, which has been both praised and found to be laughable by many, seems to show the mental cost of this tragic story and speaks volumes for the cyclical nature of revenge and its costly aftereffects. Although the emotional response that I Saw the Devil will have on its audience may remain debatable, from a style and aesthetic angle this film unquestionably delivers in spades. After having sat through the film, I must admit that I am in awe of the very popular taxi-ride sequence. This turns out to be a scene that will stand out in the pantheon of great South Korean film moments. Brutally violent, we watch as a three way serial killer battle erupts in the tight confines of a taxi cab. The only cinematic equivalent that comes to mind is the epic chase sequence in Children of Men, but this time around all of the action takes place within a small four door car, with no chasing vehicles. Blood spurts, the camera travels in ways that shouldn’t be physically possible and we are left both mortified and amazed.

	The Conclusion

I Saw the Devil takes place within a strange reality where serial killers have all but created their own small subculture within South Korean society. With the ample number of South Korean serial killer films on the market, it isn’t hard to imagine such a world. Kim Ji-Woon however delivers a comic book-esque reality where our heroes take on their supervillain contemporaries, but the real world effects are enough to damage psyche of any man. A strange mix of varying elements, I Saw the Devil will devastate and amaze. I give the film a high four out of five stars and hope that others track this one down as soon as possible!

	Steal It If You Can (2002)

Director:	Im Kyung-Soo
Writers:	Yun Je-gyun
Starring:	Park Sang-Myeon, So Ji-seob and Song Seon-mi

The Plot: Sang-Tae is a lowly government employee who married into a rich family. Although everything seems to be going great for him, appearances are most assuredly deceiving. Despite his huge television, his beautiful home, his wonderful children and his gorgeous wife, upon examination all things show cracks underneath the surface. His wife’s hobby is cooking, but since she was born without the ability to taste she consistently makes awful meals that he is forced to endure. His children are more concerned with their own affairs and Sang-tae feels antiquated in their modern home. Things are about to get interesting however, as Gang-jo has decided that Sang-tae will be his next home to burglarize! You see, Gang-jo is a famous software developer who has a string of successful video games under his belt. He has a litany of special interests and hobbies, but his biggest secret is his love affair with burglary. He routinely breaks into homes and businesses in order to get the rush that he so desires. When he burglarizes Sang-tae’s home, he soon discovers Sang-tae’s wife’s cooking… and he absolutely loves it! With Sang-tae looking like even less of a man in front of his wife and children, he is forced to find a way to put a stop to this burglar and finally prove himself in front of his family!

	The Review

For the 1st annual Korean cinema blogathon, I decided to throw my hat into the ring and expand my current knowledge level by tackling several South Korean films that I had lying around. After finally finishing Sex is Zero (for review on the VCinema Web Blog), I once again proudly proclaimed my weakness for South Korean comedies. One might refer to it as a guilty pleasure, but as I just mentioned, I am proud of this difference. I have a soft spot for South Korean romantic comedies in particular, and this is coming from a guy who absolutely despises modern Hollywood films that are made in a similar same vein. I thought that after having a really great time with Sex is Zero I would be able to take solace in my 100% success rate so far with the South Korean comedic market. However, no market-place is perfect and no film genre in any country is going to be perfect, so thus Steal It If You Can exists as a reminder of this horrifying fact.

Similar to many South Korean films I have seen from the time, Steal It If You Can has a unique focus on style and incredibly fast visual turns. The opening for the film displays this particularly well. The hyper-kinetic twists and turns within a very quick montage that shows our leading antagonist’s (an antagonist of sorts, at least) unique hobbies takes the film into nearly surreal terms of pacing. There’s no way the film could possibly live up to these speeds once the montage is over. It does ultimately try to keep that same pace moving as the narrative chugs along, but the problem doesn’t come from any kind of pacing issues. Due to the rather silly content, the excessive use of digital effects and the stylish flourishes that texture the film, this movie can’t help but have a breezy pace. However, that does not equate to being a good movie. I will admit that it’s nice to watch a Korean film that doesn’t manage to top the 120 minute mark, but even if this movie were only 60 minutes in length the problems would still far outshine the technical merits that make it as watchable as it is.

Hackneyed doesn’t begin to describe the comedy that absolutely dominates Steal It If You Can. Although this is almost equally as hackneyed to use in terms of film criticism, I have to remind the audience at this point that comedy is the most subjective of all genres in cinema. What leaves one audience in stitches within one market place may be considered trivial and boring within another. So, perhaps this is all just a case of one culture having very different ideas of what makes for perfected comedy. As much as I would like to believe that, there are many brilliant South Korean films out there that I can list out that are amazingly creative in delivering new and hilarious ideas within the world of comedy. The best way I can think to describe Steal It If You Can is that it is utterly bankrupt in terms of comedic ideas. I can only laugh at the same old jokes so many times, and Steal It If You Can takes joy in repeating cheap jokes without any form of wit or intelligence behind their meaning. A “favorite” sequence of mine revolves around the character of Sang-Tae as he begins to take martial arts lessons in an attempt to take on the burglar Gang-jo. The martial arts teacher, through a series of HILARIOUS demonstrations, shows us that his particular martial art is concentrated on punching and kicking men in their testicles! Oh the hilarity! Oh, but what is one to do if they are attacked by a woman? Well, where is a woman’s “vital point?” The answer is simple! Their nipples! The teacher then shows Sang-tae the art of the “purple nurple.” These “jokes” are followed by yet another head scratching question, what happens if you are attacked by someone who is gay? Why this changes anything, as far as vital points goes, I can not explain. All I can tell you is that a gay man’s “vital point” is apparently located within his rectum and the teacher then demonstrates how to hurt a “gay” by poking Sang-tae in his buttocks with two folded fingers. Sure, this is absolutely offensive due to its bizarre jab at gay men as being somehow different biologically than straight men, but the most offensive aspect of this scene is how utterly stupid, idiotic and terribly unfunny it is.

Although there are flashes of style throughout the film, for the most part the movie is shot in a very plain and ordinary fashion. This is perhaps a strange analogy, but I felt as if the movie began to feel like a Disney channel made for TV movie as it moved along. All of the characters are incredibly over the top in terms of their mugging, and the very ordinary lighting simply illuminates the scenes but adds no texture. The movie has moments of genius, where we see the technical wizardry of the talented crew come out, but for the most part the movie looks so bland that it is hard to think of it as anything but elementary. While the opening montage and the occasional flash in the pan displays of style do keep us hooked while watching, the dreaded “comedy” and bland characterization sink the movie deeper and deeper into a quagmire that it cannot escape.

	The Conclusion

What else is there for me to say about Steal It If You Can? I am ultimately giving the movie a two out of five and believe me, those two points are debatable. I give the movie this high of a rating primarily for its interesting visual flourishes. Although they are sporadic to say the very least, at least there is something here to keep you going during the decently paced run-time. Overall, I can’t say I recommend this one. However, that’s why we watch these movies isn’t it?

	Teke Teke (2009)

Director:	Koji Shiraishi
Writers:	Koji Shiraishi
Starring:	Yuko Oshima, Mami Yamasaki and Mai Nishida

The Plot: Kana is a highschool student who is socially different from many of the girls at her school. Her good friend Ayaka however, is very much your run of the mill teenage Japanese girl obsessed with all things “kawaii”! When Ayaka proves to be too shy to ask the uber-cool Utsumi out on a date by herself, she sends Kana in to do the dirty work. Utsumi doesn’t know Ayaka, but he agrees to the date in order to get close to Kana. After Utsumi and Ayaka’s initial date goes over well, they agree to meet again but this time Ayaka brings along Kana so that things don’t get awkward. That proves to be a bad idea, because Utsumi seems far more interested in Kana than he is with Ayaka. When the date concludes, Kana and Ayaka have an argument while walking home and separate from one another. At this point we discover the legend of Teke Teke! A ghost that has been severed at the waist and now travels Japan walking on her hands looking for those who she can mutilate to look like her. When Ayaka stumbles upon Teke Teke that night, she becomes yet another victim. Now it is up to Kana and her friends to discover the horrifying secrets surrounding Teke Teke and try to somehow put and end to this curse!

	The Review

The good folks over at Japan Flix have been incredibly charitable in allowing us to screen several of their titles in order to review and provide some press for these obscure films that they have been releasing in streamable format. Their website is dedicated to providing access to a litany of Japanese films that otherwise are not available in the west. While looking over the first group of films available through their site, the first one that stood out to me was Teke Teke. As a lifelong genre film fan, how could I turn down a movie with such an odd premise? As it turns out, the concept isn’t entirely new but the actual delivery of tension and atmosphere are where the movie tends to excel, despite some content that will surely seem “old hat” for the majority of horror film geeks. While I won’t make the argument that Teke Teke is a horror film that changes things up or announces something special to come within the future of Japanese horror, I do think its fair to say that it is an entertaining roadside attraction.

Director Koji Shiraishi is a filmmaker that I am only vaguely familiar with. I have only seen one other product of his, and it was the notorious Grotesque which (if you haven’t read my review) attempted to be the Japanese answer for Hostel, only with far more splatter. Shiraishi threw down the gauntlet with that film, attempting to reinforce the idea that the Japanese were the dominant champions when it comes to “extreme” but unfortunately his film didn’t push through enough boundaries to make up for his poor script. However, the one area Shiraishi did exceed in was with his visual flare. Although Grotesque was most assuredly a cheap piece of work, it did have some visual style and the way he floated his budget surely added to that. Similar to Grotesque, Teke Teke is a horror movie that is equally dependent on its genre but adds a similar visual dash that makes up for some of its conventional moments.

Teke Teke is a far less violent piece of work, that is to be sure, but there is still an appreciation for hardcore gore and mayhem. Teke Teke is much more reliant on mainstream Japanese horror conventions, it particularly borrows from the well know “girl ghost” genre that was popular during the early 2000′s. These films are still apparently cranked out on a regular basis, but Teke Teke does manage to stick out from the pack for several reasons. For one, the previously mentioned violence is certainly something that films like Ringu, Ju-on or Dark Water did not normally think to include. Throughout the course of Teke Teke you will find numerous scenes involving various people being ripped completely in half. The gorehounds in attendance may be slightly let down unfortunately, you won’t find any intense or brutal moments here, but there are some rather fun bits where practical makeup effects are put to good use. So, with Teke Teke you get this strange mixture of ultra-violence and creepy/atmospheric horror wrapped together in some fairly slick packaging. Teke Teke certainly shows that Shiraishi is more than just a entrepreneur looking to engage his audience through extremely cheap splatter.

Another aspect that I liked about Teke Teke, and another in my line of reasons that separates this from being “just another Japanese ghost flick”, is the fact that the movie actually comes from a well known Japanese spook story. A children’s story of sorts, the character “Teke Teke” is not completely unlike Candyman or Bloody Mary here in the United States. These are stories that are passed along from generation to generation, usually around camp fires or on school play grounds. “Teke Teke”, or “Tek Tek”, originally told the story of a girl cut in half by a train who then travels through Japan, walking on her elbows, cutting others in half with a scythe (or a saw) in order to make them just like her. Although the film differs from the explanations for “Teke Teke” that I have read, chances are that the myth grows and changes with each telling of the story. In that sense, there is no direct lineage of the story but by remaining truthful to the original concept Shiraishi gains small points for bringing Japanese culture abroad.

Generally, I can’t help but admit that I liked Teke Teke. I stress however that it is a film with definite issues, it follows genre conventions to the point where you can generally predict most of the narrative well before it happens. It definitely becomes hard to cheerlead for a movie where you can already anticipate its every move from the opening credits. When it is revealed that any person who actually sees Teke Teke will surely die after three days time, you will no doubt feel a large groan well up in your throat from the blatant stealing from Ringu. Once that big reveal takes place, the movie follows in the same generic fashion that many post-Ringu Japanese horror films did. Another negative that may draw the ire of some viewers is the very obvious and very poor use of CGI. The character of Teke Teke, who has a very interesting design, is almost ruined just from the bad quality of the digital effects. I wonder if Shiraishi didn’t realize this during pre-production, because the use of full-body (is that a pun?) shots of Teke Teke are very sporadic throughout the film. It is almost as if the director went the Jaws route and decided to shoot everything that they could without actually showing off Teke Teke. The resulting film turned out fairly positive, in my estimation.

	The Conclusion

Far from being a tremendous piece of horror cinema, Teke Teke does manage to excel in very select areas. I fear that many will have a hard time getting over the general conventions of the plot in order to see the fun little tidbits that are different and fun with this movie, but you can’t please everyone! I give the movie a sold three out of four.

	The Blood of Rebirth (2009)

Director:	Toshiaki Toyoda
Writers:	Toshiaki Toyoda
Starring:	Tatsuya Nakamura, Mayuu Kusakari and Kiyohiko Shibukawa

The Plot: The film deals with a popular Japanese legend about a wandering adventurer known as Oguri (full name Oguri Hangan Daisukeshige), but our story here ventures down a different path than most versions of the story. Here, Oguri (played by Tatsuya Nakamura) is a masseuse who, while wandering the forest, encounters lord Daizen (Kiyohiko Shibukawa) who has contracted an STD that has caused his testicles to swell to mammoth proportions. While searching for anyone and everyone who can possibly help him with his ordeal, he comes in contact with Oguri who doesn’t want to be burdened by staying in one place for too long. However, after some idle threats the masseuse ends up agreeing to a partnership with the evil lord. Unfortunately, the lord begins to feel jealous about Oguri and his ability to pleasure others. After seeing his virginal future lover Tarue (whom he plans to save until after he is cured of his STD) given a massage by the wanderer, he makes a decision to kill off the masseuse. A feat that he accomplishes that very evening. When the masseuse awakens in the afterlife he is given the choice to do whatever he wishes. Rather than moving on to heaven, the masseuse decides to return to earth. In order to do that he will have to return as a hungry ghost and must remain in a sitting fashion, to be dragged across the countryside by whatever stranger agrees to do the job. When he reaches his destination, the spring of rebirth, he will be able to fully return to human form!

	The Review

For those of you who don’t know me personally, you may not be aware of my adoration and love for Japanese filmmaker Toshiaki Toyoda. With his first four films (excluding the documentary Unchain, which I plan to finally see sometime soon), he cemented himself as one of my favorite living directors. Why is his work so spectacular? Well, it helps to see his work for yourself, but ostensibly he takes incredibly hip and cool concepts but gives them depth and life in ways that most filmmakers simply couldn’t. His films are filled with subtext, complicated characters and a brilliant control of music and emotional content. An extremely talented filmmaker, his work is heralded by those who have seen his films but he still remains relatively unknown outside of Asian film circles. This is a shame, really, since his work can speak to all audiences. Keeping in mind that his films all have a very hip and youth-centered focus (aside from Hanging Garden, but even then there are youthful characters throughout and it takes place in a very modern setting), I was a bit surprised when I first read about Toyoda doing a period piece. I honestly didn’t know what to make of the idea. The end result for The Blood of Rebirth however turns out as something completely unique in cinema and it shows a lot of the filmmakers interest, even if it doesn’t come off as his most triumphant effort.

After first hearing about this project I think I was just glad to hear that Toyoda was returning to work after such a long hiatus. For those of you who don’t keep up with the filmmaker, the reason for this hiatus was not his own doing. Right around the time that Hanging Garden was to be released, Toyoda was busted with “stimulants” and given three years of probation. Within the Japanese entertainment world, this isn’t the small little speed bump that such a thing tends to be in the world of Hollywood. A weekend of TMZ reports followed by a month of rehab essentially cleans the slate with the American public, but within Japan such actions can be quite damning. All one has to do is look up the career of Reiko Ike to see just how damning such a thing can be. So, Toyoda ended up being shelved for several years with his only notable project being a live on-stage video/audio project with a rock group known as Twin Tail. It is worth noting that Twin Tail also helped with the music here in Blood of Rebirth. Toyoda apparently also produced the band’s first album, and their live show was attributed with a video montage directed by the filmmaker that flowed along with the music. After years of nothing and without warning, it is ultimately announced that Toshiaki Toyoda is back and his project would be the retelling of an ancient Japanese legend. Although I found myself ecstatic to hear about him working again, I couldn’t help but wonder how his very pop-culture influenced/hip/contemporary style with these old world sensibilities?

Surprisingly, with all of the problems that The Blood of Rebirth may actually have, mixing Toyoda’s style into this period piece actually isn’t one of them. Truthfully, if there is a problem with the influx of style here, it may be that Toyoda is too excessive here. Long known for his use of slow motion and thudding rock music film scores, Toyoda once again incorporates these ideas into his film but with The Blood of Rebirth the project begins to feel as if it is long on style and short on content. Clocking in with a running time of 83 minutes, this is not a terribly long feature and unfortunately there are a tremendous number of scenes that seem to drag it out until the pacing simply falls apart. The majority of these moments come during the latter half of the production, but the stronger opening minutes aren’t enough to really save the film. Although that sounds depressingly negative when talking about the film, this isn’t a terrible piece of work by any stretch of the imagination. Watching the film and taking into consideration that this is an experiment in style and that it pushes the boundaries between the musical and the cinematic… this can be a rewarding watch, I have no questions about that. However, as far as a continuation in the progressive career of Toshiaki Toyoda, sure this is a bit of a disappointment.

There’s never a moment in the film that we aren’t fully aware that this is a Toyoda piece. From the opening minutes that are fueled by a rocking drum-laden piece of instrumental music, to the ending which certainly illustrates his perfection of slow motion to fully capture tiny dramatic moments. This film, despite the period setting, has the Toyoda brand stamped all over it. Even the STD that our evil Lord has contracted helps remind me of Toyoda’s earlier efforts and his sometimes juvenile sense of humor (ie: the feces scene in Blue Spring). His description of his testicles as being swollen “like pumpkins” is equally disgusting and humorous at the same time. Toyoda’s flare for violence is also brought back into the limelight, as one sequence which is bound to catch the ire of fish lovers the world over greatly showcases. Toyoda’s appreciation for silent character exploration while also displaying some incredibly grisly visuals is both intriguing and slightly revolting at the same time. All of this ultimately adds up to the strange hypnotic quality that the film has over its audience. It is far from Toyoda’s best work, but it shows an interesting path for the filmmaker to walk and I’m interested in seeing just what he will take from this experience in the future.

	The Conclusion

There has been a great deal of talk about The Blood of Rebirth as being a title that examines Toyoda’s own troubles with the law and his hope to be reborn as an artist and a man. After all, much of the story seems to focus on one man’s ultimate redemption. It is a good vehicle for Toyoda to build upon the musical experimentation that he has been working on during his off season, but as a feature length film it of course has its problems. I ultimately give the film a three out of five, as I did like it on a general basis. However, I am hoping for a lot more from Toyoda as he finds a new voice and once again delivers a strong and rich narrative, with touching and heartfelt characters.