Tsukamoto, who previously exploded modern Japanese cinema with the mind-bending Tetsuo: The Iron Man and its sequel Tetsuo: The Body Hammer is up to his old tricks once again, and all you can say is “Wow!” Like his previous work, Tokyo Fist is a tough nut to crack, plot-wise (it certainly doesn’t help matters that the white subtitles often lie against white backgrounds, making them all but illegible), but even a single incomprehensible viewing is a powerful experience. It’s like smashing your face into the whirling blades of some outlandish, multi-hued industrial razor-fan… and I mean that in a good way. With his rapid-fire editing, colorful blue and red lighting, and wonderfully bizarre camerawork, you get the feeling that Tokyo Fist wasn’t processed in a film lab — it was processed in a methamphetamine lab, possibly by a marmot on PCP. Tsukamoto himself plays Tsuda, a mild-mannered Tokyo salaryman who runs into old childhood chum Takuji (Tsukamoto’s real-life brother Koji) and begins an expanded, ruinous love triangle — the third corner of which is provided by Tsuda’s girlfriend Hizuru (Fujii), with disastrous postmodern results. Since their youthful parting, Takuji has become a professional boxer, able to kick ass with a single digit and in possession of a temper and attitude to match. Inflamed over his rival’s advances on his best girl, Tsuda himself takes up the sport at a gym, and tools himself into a deadly killing machine. Much of the rest of the plot is incomprehensible without repeated viewings, but then few Westerners go to Tsukamoto’s films for their finely nuanced storylines. This is a film about sex and violence, and viewed as such it approaches the level of a masterpiece, albeit a distinctly surreal one. Tsukamoto’s ongoing fascination with body mutation and the transgressive effects thereof closely mirrors the similar themes of Canadian auteur David Cronenberg; both twist the human body into horrific shapes and then sit back and let the psyche follow. Tsukamoto, however, is a master of low-level dread. Tokyo Fist isn’t a quiet film by anyone’s standards, but his use of skewed angles and gel-drenched pyrotechnics recalls Dario Argento more than anyone else. Still, originality is his hallmark. Rarely do you encounter this much crimson gore spattering the walls in what is essentially a boxing film gone over to the dark side. It’s Raging Bull on acid, with a bit of tweaky F.W. Murnau thrown in for bad measure, all deafening chopsocky, oozing nostrils, giddy gallows humor, and stylized bad taste. Unlike anything else you’ve seen, Tokyo Fist is an impure pop marvel: sleazoid cinema for the thinking degenerate.
This article appears in April 10 • 1998 (Cover).