Tokyo Tribe

The pretext for this all-out exploitation movie that tells much of its story through Japanese rap music is the near future when the capital city is the site of territorial warfare between opposing street gangs. A daunting task for the subtitling unit, but a challenge, too, for maverick, anti-establishment writer/director Sion Sono (Love Exposure), who unleashes gratuitous nudity and violence from the outset, but still manages to keep the mischief fresh and frisky for the two-hour running time. "Where's my Gatling gun?", snarls Elvis-quiffed crime boss Buppa (Riki Takeuchi) in a performance as deliriously unrestrained as everything else in a movie that puts an armoured tank on the Shibuya streets, deploys the dark forces of a devil-worshipping high priest, yet always has its heart behind the peace-and-love collective who see through the macho posturing causing the carnage. Evidently, Sono's hyper-kinetic high jinks will not be to all tastes, but this promises and delivers a quintessentially Japanese level of insanity.