Tokyo Tribe (2014)

Truly Dreadful Film

One of my all time favorites.

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

hyped garbage

TOKYO TRIBE is another quite incredible movie from Japanese cult director Sion Sono, a man whose has overtaken Takashi Miike as that country's supreme director of trashy, anything-goes cinema. I've previously experienced the delights of such films as GUILTY OF ROMANCE and LOVE EXPOSURE among others, but even they didn't prepare me for this high-energy musical that has to be seen to be believed.The story is set in an alternate universe Tokyo, one that is dominated by rival gangs. The tale sees a pair of super-villains teaming up to commit murder, only to find themselves opposed by the rest of the gangs who gather together to combat them. The result is an incredible concoction of martial arts action, sexuality, and generally cool characters doing intensely cool things. I loved every demented minute of it, and that's coming from somebody who doesn't even like rap music. It says something about Sono's efforts that I ended up loving the music here, even if it is just for this movie.

'TOKYO TRIBE': Four and a Half Stars (Out of Five)A martial arts/action/comedy/musical flick, spoken almost entirely in rap verse! The film has been described (by it's marketing campaign) as "The world's first battle rap musical", and it's based on the popular Manga series, 'Tokyo Tribe2', by Santa Inoue. It was written and directed by Sion Sono (who's probably most well known for helming 2013's 'WHY DON'T YOU PLAY IN HELL?') and it stars Ryohei Suzuki, Young Dais, Riki Takeuchi, Shota Sometani, Ryuta Sato and Akihiro Kitamura. The movie tells the story of a futuristic Japan, divided into territorial gangs; until one gang leader breaks the truce. It's one of the craziest, and most bizarrely original films, I've seen all year!Sometime, in the not too distant future, Japan is divided into separate street gangs; each representing a different faction, collectively known as the 'Tokyo Tribes'. The leader of one tribe, Mera (Suzuki), decides to break the peace, and join forces with another ruthless gang leader, Buppa (Takeuchi). Together they wage war on another tribe, and cause an 'all out war'. Blood fills the streets; as everyone turns to brutal violence, and continuous rapping.The movie is really weird, and definitely not for everyone, but I like 'weird'; and I found myself really enjoying it. The film took a little while for me to get into, at first it's pretty jarring; but once I was 'hooked', I was completely involved and thoroughly entertained! The action is brutally violent, and many scenes are pretty twisted and sadistic; but it's also filled with catchy hip- hop music, and beautifully choreographed fight scenes. The performances are great, and the visuals are always interesting to look at. The film is sure to become a beloved cult classic, by many genre fans, while many others will hate it. You know you're witnessing 'great art', when people are completely divided!Watch our movie review show 'MOVIE TALK' at: https://youtu.be/41q3ZuWGdEE

To be clear I have never read the manga it was based off of so some of my comments may be invalid. Tokyo Tribe is seriously just whacked up from angles. Very cool idea to begin with, however, and I do commend them for the way they separated their characters; each very colourful and unique. Colour is one of the things i love about Japanese films, they always have 'em. Also for the record, I have a grasp on how Japanese grammar works so there are times i do pick up a different perspective on their acting sometimes as Japanese comes across in English sometimes as very plain. But you know, i get what they're trying to say...anywayOKAY, acting was ... well, its hard to tell. From one angle each character would have half of their dialogue in rap. But when it comes to a film like this, one can be forgiving because it's mostly just trying to express a message rather than a film straight up about some acting. So i didn't mind that the characters were all jacked up on their own principles and egos. No one really stands out except maybe the 'sumni/sumi' or whatever the hell her name was (had glitchy hard sub). Everyone else i guess acted the way they were supposed to act (presuming in regards to the manga) so nothing really special. No Oscar nominations here LOL u know what i mean? Really was digging the cinematography. City representations of nightlife was pretty cool, semi spot on. The movie did feel like it was on a budget though the characters were always enough to keep your mind guessing. really enjoyed the shots whereby the camera follows the character and things just happen around him. It's like the world froze while they did that. there was some really strange scenes however but nothing too distasteful - it's to be expected what with all the smuttiness and perversion. But yes they did far too many revisits to old locations which was disappointing. And the occasionally really out of place character shots whereby the after a dialogue scene the camera very quickly cuts away to a shot of an not overly important character and that character does something that adds to the archetype or style of the personality being represented.The plot idea was pretty sick but the pacing was quite all over the place. Lots of overbearingly long expository dialogue in the form of rap (ill go more in detail later.) The idea of warring tribes is cool but not really explored, more like introduced and then mashed together. The bad guy in this film is really messed up which is typical of the style but very out of place in terms of rap. like his character or the people in his crew didn't really necessarily need to be rappers. But ill say it does lend to the overall blend. The plot was mostly predictable too, only not when some weird moments were occurring like the beatboxing maid bits and the fastid strokings of a golden dildo. Ending was totally lame though.Script, okay, rap too. I can't fully comment on this because I know I'll be semi- wrong because of the translation. But the rap was OK. What dragged it down was the fact that most of it was expository dialogue. Basically explaining exactly what was happening. And then so much patriarchal archetypal rap. The introduction part was great, you really got a sense of how different each tribe was, through their visual displays and their rap style and beat style. But as the characters crossed over it felt less like a collab and more like the awkward clash of another mans hand touching your buttocks. You feel uncomfortable and it's just plain wrong. There wasn't really much to say on this except the way they depicted chillhop rap was funny albeit quite inaccurate.The music was however not up to standard for a film like this. I honestly expected a well thought out selection of beats and breaks were going to astound me but I was ashamed to find out it was focused mostly and solely on the uniqueness of a group among groups of interloping characters. There were some straight out terrible industrial experimental beats during some of the bad guy scenes and man were they industrially experimentally bad.I wished there were more fight scenes that were more choreographed. Some flashy stuff but mostly one hit per guy sort of fights which can get pretty boring to watch. If it was anything like crow zero now that would be awesome. The rapping throughout a movie could have been done well had the characters been written more thoroughly and less 'this is my style and this is my take on the situation'. The flow separations are cool though it never really got a time to shine through because of the whole bad guy scenes. Too many of those. But great characters, awesome main character; a fighting cute girl who can rap and showed her boobies on screen - thats a real woman im telling ya. Great costumes and really over the top stereotypes. Lots of fun watching this in the sense of sight. In the sense of sight there was always something happening so you could probably still be entertained had the film been silent. Yeah 6/10. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who likes rap unless they were begging me to show them a film about Japanese rappers who rap in different styles, do manga type music things that is illustrated with lots of colour. If i happen to stumble in on someone watching the film I would gladly sit through it again with them to see their reactions and to make comments on how absurdly inane all the scenes were.ps. I'm not a LOL kind of guy.

Shion Sono can, in the case of Love Exposure, make a 4 hour movie feel like a 2 hour movie and in the case of Tokyo Tribe make a two hour movie feel like a four hour movie. A strange showdown in Tokyo between warring crews is a freaking absurd mix between the Warriors, 1970's yakuza flicks, and an entire history of hip hop videos. The beats are tight, the visuals mind-blowing, the whole thing is like a crazy hallucination that is actually closer to way the real world operates than we admit. The set it is filmed on is obviously fake like the rain that hits it, the acting is absurd, the plot simple, but executed however the hell he wants. What is Shion Sono trying to say??? I think everyone that watches Tokyo Tribe at one point has to ask the question they know they shouldn't. I see, hear, and feel this movie. It does drag at times, since they're defiantly rapping almost every line of dialogue. Something about this film makes it the most progressive, subversive, pure cinema yet to be made on such a large scale. It's inaccessible, but mindless. It's mindful and welcoming. Crazy, insane, but completely lucid the entire time. I think it's genius. I think this guy Shion Sono is a genius. Should I admit that again? Oh I guess I already did on his last film.