Review of Tokyo Gore Police (2008) by Jeff R — 11 Oct 2009

Tokyo Gore Police is a review-proof film.

You hear the title and your response is likely to be one of two polarised opposites. Even if your interest in film is only passing, you?ll be able to determine from the name that it?s unlikely to feature Anne Hathaway, or Hugh Jackman. Or Rene Zellwegger. Or anybody else you might want to take your girlfriend to a film starring. Indeed, I had to wait until my wife had gone to bed before watching the DVD I?d imported.

She?s not one for swearing, my wife ? but I think this is a film to make her explete. The same is likely true for your wife too, or your girlfriend. Or even that girl from the coffee shop who you?re sure gives you looks every time you go in there. She does, definitely.

She?d continue to give you looks if you took her to see Tokyo Gore Police, but they?d be looks reinforced by slight, nervous backing away, and possibly a sideways warning glance to her co-workers. One that says ?yes, that?s the guy.?

So one response to hearing the title is the confident belief that this film is not for you. The polar opinion is that it very much is your type of film. That?s probably more likely, because if you?re hearing the title at all, then you?re probably interested in films that work their monkey magic a little bit outside the My Bloody Valentine 3D, Final Destination franchise horror mainstream.

What?s the strangest moment you?ve ever seen in a horror film?

I suspect it?s not as strange as almost any of the scenes you will see in this film. I suspect it?s not as strange as seeing a Japanese policemen attacking his colleagues by shooting them with projectiles from his own giant mutant cock. And balls.

Yes, his cock.

And balls.

Or perhaps a quadruple amputee bondage torso, trussed up in gas mask and rubber corset, attacking with four samurai swords strapped to their flailing stumps?

Or perhaps, oh I don?t know, a giant mini-gun that fires severed forearms, each fist charmingly insulting with an extended middle finger?

My revealing these sequences will in no way spoil your enjoyment of the film, because while each one sounds show-stoppingly insane, snapping the indicator needle on your W.T.F!-o-meter, they are a mere drop in the ocean of gore on display for your discerning enjoyment. In fact, I?m very deliberately not spoilering the dozens more equally-as-nuts giblet-flinging moments that decisively take the entrail biscuit.

Setting the gore bar so high, that even a lifetime of horror film fandom left me unprepared.

So. The needless review then.

A new breed of criminal has appeared on the streets of near-future Tokyo. Engineers ? a group who can somehow mutate their injuries into hideous, tumourous weapons. But what is their origin? The privatised Tokyo Police Force must investigate and fight back with their own weapon ? a samurai-skilled young woman who cuts herself while she sits in her police Saab waiting for a call.

We already know that you?re only going to watch this film if the promise of gore is sufficient Siren-song to lure you into investing two hours. Because it is two hours. And that?s too long, even with the hundreds and thousands topping of beheadings and face-removals. The scenes in between the scenes are hopeless. Dull and pointless. I didn?t care about the back-story of characters who only existed to have their eyeballs shot out. I didn?t care about the pretend-satire of the Paul Verhoeven-style informercials. I couldn?t follow the sudden logic leap that flipped the police from heroic to giggling Nazis putting cloth bags over students? heads and stabbing them in the guts. There is attempted humour, but there?s no glee to it. There is exposition and flashback, but you have to make yourself not fast-forward past it.

You want to concentrate on the scenes that look like the film ate all its mad tablets for breakfast that morning.

Be frank, you just want to see the bit where the pretty girl bites off a gangster?s arm with her fanjita.