If there's a more dramatic context for human passion than fistfighting, I don't know what it is. From, say, GENTLEMAN JIM, THE HARDER THEY FALL, REQUIEM FOR A HEAVYWEIGHT (both versions), THE GREAT WHITE HOPE and FAT CITY to, say, HARD TIMES, ROCKY, THE GREATEST, RAGING BULL, and ALI, The Sweet Science has been used to examine The Human Condition, up close and personal; subtext is thrust to the forefront, and boxing as drama is as clear and as pure as it comes. TOKYO FIST follows in that tradition, but in a hyperkinetic way that is so over-the-top that it would make Sam Raimi blush. That's not a bad thing: pushing the cinematic envelope is sometimes necessary (audiences become jaded, and need that wake-up call). Director Tsukamoto isn't practicing his ten-second nap by any stretch of the imagination. And stretching the imagination is exactly what he does. We see a man get struck by a blow that opens his brow- and blood comes spraying forth in a way it never could in real life. It's an image so extreme that one can't help but laugh... but, in the context of the emotional cauldron that is TOKYO FIST, it's very apropos. It's the spewing forth of pent-up emotions that perhaps only a Japanese filmmaker could have conceived (which seems a sound assumption, as no other filmmaker has ever- to my knowledge- come so close to exposing raw nerve endings in a motion picture). TOKYO FIST is an amazing achievement.
Review of Tokyo Fist
