Tokyo Tribe Review
"Dogs before b**tches"
The unholy love-child The Raid and West Side Story, Japanese auteur Sion Sono's Tokyo Tribe is a Warriors-esque gangster action musical where almost every line is rapped. It's just as inherently awesome as that sounds! A propulsive explosion of shocking violence, incredible music and pure-hearted sincerity, Tokyo Tribe caters for the nichest of niche audiences. It's a work of complete, suffocating insanity; one of the most singular visions in recent memory. I wouldn't want it any other way...
In an alternate Japan, Tokyo is divided between territorial street gangs, each occupying a dazzling new level of hedonistic degeneration. A lone hope beckons from the charming Musashino Saru group, whose message of peace, love and acceptance comes to define the deceptively moralist film. When Wu-Ronz’s manically emasculated Meru unites with Buppa (of Buppa Town; where else?) to conquer all of Tokyo, he unleashes an all-out war. A parade of increasingly absurd personalities and situations follows as Tokyo Tribe seeks to enthral above all else. Our guide through the chaos is Shôta Sometani as the aptly-dubbed MC, a dispassionate observer as amused by the youth’s animalistic tendencies as Sono evidently is.
The acclaimed purveyor of intellectual exploitation is simultaneously disgusted by and revelling in his story’s self-imposed frivolity. The geniunely moving conclusion, transcending all the characters’ alpha-male posturing, is where Tokyo Tribe plays
its true hand. The previous two hours of swaggering mindlessness have all been
for nothing; only compassion and love can solve the senseless conflict that has
driven the delightfully bonkers proceedings. Amid the neon-drenched hellfire of
Tokyo’s underworld, Sono finds profundity in unbridled vacuity.
By celebrating, chastising and eventually galvanising
a generation lost to empty self-projection, Sono has crafted a postmodernist
masterpiece. Tokyo Tribe is violently
affectionate, lovably vile and wholly indescribable. There is but one certainty
with a film so forcefully enigmatic: you simply must see this movie.
Five-Word Verdict: A cult classic is born.
Score: 5/5
