CITY OF LOST SOULS (Japan, 2000)
Directed by: Takashi Miike
Starring: Teah! Michelle Reis! Patricia Manterola, Koji Kikkawa, Mitsuhiro Oikawa
Takashi Miike is Japan's number one auteur because his brains shoot out rays that transform the familiar into the bizarre. Twist up the romantic comedy - Zap! - you've got Audition. Schoolkids come of age — Zonk! — Fudoh. The family musical — Zoiks! — The Happiness of the Katakuris. Now, take the made-for-cable late-night action movie — Atomica! — you've got City of Lost Souls, a flick that posits Japan as a giant, multicultural pinata and Takashi Miike as the guy who's beating the hell out of it with a stick.
The made-for-cable late-night action movie was one of those ‘80s triumphs of silicone over substance, directed by Andy Sidaris, or William Lustig and starring Joe Estevez (Martin Sheen's younger brother) or Michael Van Sant. Bouncing babes in day-glo bikinis jiggle off rounds from heavy caliber machine guns. Maseratis and Lamborghinis fart fire and fly through the air. A helicopter chases a speedboat and then a motorcycle jumps over it. Empty calories galore.
Flash forward 15 years to The City of Lost Souls. Japanese-Brazilian hitman, Teah, hijacks a helicopter and chases down a school bus full of illegal immigrants being deported from Japan. One of them is his beautiful, Chinese girlfriend, Kei (Michelle Reis from Wong Kar-wai's Fallen Angels and Hou Hsiao-hsien's Flowers of Shanghai). He machine guns the guards, grabs Kei, and chuffs off to Tokyo. They hover over Shinjuku and then jump out, plummet hundreds of feet, land unharmed, and start running. Yes, it's the Looney Tunes gone ultraviolent, high on cocaine, a pistol in each hand and laughing all the way.
Seeking a way out of Japan they steal cocaine from the Yakuza, piss off the Chinese triads, and burn the Russian mob. Triple crosses unfurl in underground caverns beneath city streets, scenes from The Matrix are re-staged with chickens, ping pong becomes a deathsport. Most of us think of Japan as a mono-racial country full of Japanese people. Miike's trash epic is sloshing over the sides with expatriate Russians, stealthy Chinese, homicidal biracial radical queers, Brazilian sex workers, rastafarians, and a raggedy population of pimps and pursesnatchers that looks like a Benneton ad gone wrong.
Considered by many to be Miike's most accessible movie, The City of Lost Souls is solid action backed up by Miike's bizarro proclivities, a subversive multiculti agenda, and a beating, cartoon heart worn defiantly on its sleeve.