crossbow0106 Shinya Tsukamoto's unique vision is fairly amazing. I thought the better known "A Snake Of June" was brilliant and provocative, but this film is also, even though they are hardly about the same thing. Mr. Tsukamoto, who produced, edited, wrote and directed this, also stars in it as Goda, a commericals director whose girlfriend has killed herself with a gun. Goda's life and reason unravels, and he obsesses with finding a gun. He falls in with a gang of disenfranchised youth in Tokyo's Shibuya (the Harajuku district, which is next to Shibuya in Tokyo, is a prime place for these young people still) and gets involved in a gang fight as well as other violence. The film was shot in black and white, which was an excellent idea, since the film is too stark to be in color. This is not for casual film goers, but fans of Tarantino and Darren Aronofsky's work will like this. Mr. Tsukamoto has created a film about the lure of non-redemption and brilliant shoots it almost documentary style. The other characters, especially the brooding model like Kirina Miao as Chisato, are also good, but this is Mr. Tsukamoto's film. Obtain the DVD, which has an interview with him taken years later in which he answers certain questions about the film. It is a candid view of his process and idea. This movie is very in your face and its effectiveness in spreading the message of violence and hopelessness is fascinating. I highly recommend it.

K_Todorov A visually stunning experiment in motion picture storytelling Shynia Tsukamoto's "Bullet Ballet" is a semi-revenge tale, semi-philosophical examination of the human condition. It explores themes and ideas concerning both the moral and social collapse of the modern man. As his earlier works such as "Tetsuo" and "Tokyo Fist" Tsukamoto uses the visual representation, the composition of individual scenes, minimalist colour palette, in this case a wonderfully sharp contrast between black and white, to express his ideas rather than just bombarding us with excessive amounts of expository dialogue. From the opening Goda (Shinya Tsukamoto) seems content with his life. He has a nice job working as a commercial director, has a long term girlfriend, and at the moment he is sitting at a table apparently drinking. The phone rings, its his girlfriend. They have a nice little chat, and Goda seems pleased, and why shouldn't he be, everything is alright. The conversation ends, Goda returns home and finds his girlfriend dead. She killed herself. She killed herself with a gun. Goda doesn't understand why, everything was alright, just a minute ago they were talking on the phone and now she killed herself. She killed herself with a gun. Goda is lost. He is standing in front of an old mirror in a old room, drops of water violently hitting a half-dead cockroach on the floor, Goda raises his hand, as if a gun, he aims at his reflection, tense, and pulls the imaginary trigger three times. Titles roll "Bullet Ballet", a dance of death. A dance of death, is the easiest way to describe the movie itself, but not in the usual way mind you. Bullet Ballet is more concerned with its characters and their lack of… connection, to put it bluntly, with the world, as Goda becomes obsessed with his girlfriend's death he tries to acquire the same gun with which she shot herself. Meanwhile he meets up with this girl he once helped, and gets in trouble with some guys from the gang she's in. The girl,Chisato(Kirina Mano), is on first impression simply suicidal, but that is just first impression. Goda's obsession grows, hardened by a burning desire for revenge against the gang, he sets out to make his own gun. And then it hits us, the reality of the situation, just hints at first, but even so it is becoming clear what is happening to this man. The gun, you see, is simply a metaphor, and of course it is a metaphor for death. He wants to understand his girlfriend's death, but he is losing himself in the process. He is losing his connection to life. Reason for being? He has none. And as the story slowly rolls forward, there is this impression that the dance of death is really the idea of facing death, witnessing death, surviving death, and then being reborn again. This idea comes the observation of the relationship between Goda and Chisato, the two characters obviously seem connected by their disconnection from the outside world. They understand each other. In a way they are one character split in two, with each segment providing hints to the overall motivation of the two. Chisato provides proof that Goda is dancing with death like she is, while Goda's past hints to a traumatic experience that lead Chisato to her current disposition. The final scene is the catharsis of the story, when the two characters finally experience all the chaos, finally witnessing all the death, seeing its effect on others, are free from their emotional blockage. Shinya Tsukamoto wrote, directed and produced "Bullet Ballet". He was also in charge of lightning, set design … and played a leading role. The man, much like his Tetsuo is a machine, a one man film crew. Chu Ishikawa, as usual, does the soundtrack and what a soundtrack it is, as percussive industrial music hits you like a jackhammer in some of the more dark scenes. While a gentler, more depressing, yet nevertheless more optimistic tune is composed for the film's ending scene. Beyond all the horror of death, beyond all the disturbing scenes of violence, beyond the sociopathic behavior, "Bullet Ballet" shines with its search for humanity at the darkest places, at the darkest moments, at the darkest times.

Graham Greene Bullet Ballet (1998) is one of Shinya Tsukamoto's more personal and enigmatic films, attempting, as it does, to merge elements of narrative and character alongside his usual preoccupations with visual metaphor and cinematic experimentation. The manner in which these two very distinctive styles come together isn't always as seamless as many of the director's other films, with the juxtaposition of these two worlds creating a plot line and a sense of character motivation that is often quite hard to follow, no doubt enlivening and alienating the majority of its viewers in equal measures. Arriving home from work one night, TV commercials director Goda (played by Tsukamoto himself) is shocked to discover that his long-term partner Kiriko (Kyoka Suzuki) has committed suicide. Unable to cope with this tragic turn of events, Goda becomes obsessed with the idea of owning a Chief Special – the same handgun used by Kiriko in her own death. However, after wandering the streets of Tokyo looking for an arms dealer, he stumbles into a dark alleyway where he meets Chisato (Kirina Mano), a waif-like street punk who Goda saved from the path of an oncoming train during a previous encounter. Concerned for her well-being, he tries to give her a lecture but instead, is beaten and robbed by members of Chisato's gang – here led by the charismatic Goto (Murase Takahiro). After this encounter, Goda's pistol obsession becomes inexplicably intertwined with this gang of street punks, until events start to spiral desperately out of control for all involved.Like many of Tsukamoto's other films, in particular the preceding Tokyo Fist (1995) and his later masterworks A Snake of June (2002) and Vital (2004), the film focuses on the idea of identity loss - as we are introduced to a character who, through a series of unfortunate events partially described above, can no longer understand his place in the world and attempts to reclaim his identity through primal violence. With this in mind, some have compared the film to Scorsese's masterpiece Taxi Driver (1976); however, the comparison is really quite superficial. Bullet Ballet lacks the sense of spiralling catharsis so central to Taxi Driver's gun-toting loner Travis Bickle, instead capturing the aimless need for something – anything – to give the protagonist's life a sense of purpose. The gun becomes a god-like symbol of power for Goda; something that can command and destroy without even being used. However, as the film progresses, it becomes clear that it is not the gun that has re-invigorated Goda's design for life, but the extraordinary, life-threatening scenarios he has witnessed in the pursuit of the weapon in question. Like Tsuda from Tokyo Fist or Rinko from A Snake of June, Goda, Chisato and Goto must enter into a series of self-inflicted psychological tests that will in effect shock them out of their sense of numbed, social paralysis - almost destroying them before they can truly feel whole. These are classic Tsukamoto ideas, prevalent in even his first acknowledged feature film, Tetsuo: The Iron Man. However, whereas that film and his subsequent projects painted in broad-strokes; combining the themes and ideas with heavy visual symbolism and bold experimentation, Bullet Ballet is much more conventional in scope. At times it was reminiscent of David Cronenberg at his most clinical and detached; recalling films such as Dead Ringers (1988) or his controversial adaptation of Crash (1997), which again, has a similar thread about discovering your true self and your lust for life by putting it (literally) on the line.Tsukamoto captures the film in a noir-like black and white; creating a world literally without colour that perfectly underpins the feckless "do or die, life or death" attitude expressed by Goto's gang of misguided young tear-aways. Occasionally the director indulges in a moment of intense visual expression - recalling his more typical work with the use of rapidly edited montages, skewed camera perspectives and that pounding industrial soundtrack - but for the most part, the approach is fairly restrained; recalling his more recent film Vital and the earlier, more subdued moments of A Snake of June. As I said before, the film doesn't flow as seamlessly as I would have expected; often confounding viewers by going in directions that you wouldn't normally expect, which can be quite jarring and disconcerting for those of us trying to pick apart the motivation of the characters. As a result the film doesn't quite have the same impact of Tokyo Fist or A Snake of June, seeming somewhat formless (which is a real failing given the film's reliance on narrative over visual spectacle). That said; it's in no way a "bad film", but rather, one that will test the patience of many viewers expecting something as frantic and ballistic as the more iconic Tetsuo films, offering instead a story that is emotionally rich, thematically enigmatic, but at times, occasionally quite thin. If you're already a fan of Tsukamoto's work then I would say stick with it regardless. The film offers a number of standout set-pieces, from the initial scenes of Goda trying (and often failing in true deadpan fashion) to buy the weapon, to a series of fairly frantic action sequences that almost recall the Tsukamoto that many will be more familiar with.Bullet Ballet was a bold departure for Tsukamoto; giving us more plot and deeper characters, as well as one of his most understated and sympathetic performances in the lead role (Tsukamoto, not only a great film director, editor and cinematographer, but also a fairly underrated actor as well). It doesn't quite come together as seamlessly as it should, leaving many loose threads and a myriad of unanswered questions, but also offers some truly intense and truly astounding individual sequences. A flawed minor-masterpiece then, from one of contemporary cinema's true originals.

D Throat Bullet Ballet starts out as a fine movie: man wants to avenge his wife, who had connections with a criminal organization. But how does he, a businessman, get a gun? The first 45 minutes deal with this and his search for the criminals: it is turning out to be a sort of Japanese Taxi Driver... But then during a gang fight the story shifts, to its demise, unfortunately. From then on you're looking at a lost cause, as every thread of plot from the first half is trashed and an entirely new movie appears, a very bad movie. Too bad, since Tsakamoto has made some fine movies before.