Prolific Japanese director Takashi Miike has made 52 film and television projects since 1991, but his work is only slowly filtering over to North America. Obviously inspired by Scorsese, Tarantino, and Hong Kong auteurs such as Tsui Hark, Miike's City of Lost Souls is a simple “lovers on the run” genre piece that follows Japanese-Brazilian Mario (Teah) and Chinese Kei (Michelle Reis) as they try to escape the Chinese Mafia, Japanese Yakuza, the police, the media, and...um…a midget with diarrhea. With the story whizzing along from Sao Paolo to Tokyo to Okinawa, it's not always entirely clear where the couple is running to or why different groups are pursuing them; but narrative coherence is not the focus in a film that finds bloodthirsty pleasure in an intense ping-pong match, a helicopter rescue from the desert, and a cockfight where the winning rooster seems to have been studying The Matrix. From its Leone-esque opening to the preponderance of trench coats, sunglasses, and slick martial arts moves, this story of strangers in strange lands is sure to appeal to cinema buffs. Recommended. (D. Fienberg)
City of Lost Souls
Chimera, 105 min., R, VHS: $29.99, DVD: $24.98 Volume 18, Issue 2
City of Lost Souls
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