Tuesday, February 07, 2012
Edohotep
Cast: Tak Sakaguchi, Miho Ninagawa.
The Japanese certainly love their baseball, and Deadball is a bizarre comedic twist in showing how enthusiastic some can get. In a game that is supposed to be about teamwork, the theme of survival of the fittest is more appropriate.
As young Jubeh Yakyu (Tak Sakaguchi) shows in his practice round with his father, tossing the ball around is killer! Yakyu-san has this ability to supercharge his throws and those who try to catch them will not survive it. Many years later, the boy has become a violent offender, and while awaiting trial, he’s transported to a prison where he tries to blend in.
But amongst his cellmates, not many of them want to be his friends. Sakaguchi shows that he can play a mild mannered character, but he is a lot more lovable as a psycho killer—like in his other film, Yakuza Weapon. The softer performance does show his range, but without the energy, the dynamics in this film feels very off.
And the challenges of parodying a touchy subject cannot go unobserved either. With the chief warden Ishimara (Miho Ninagawa) reveling in her sadism, the humour is not for everyone—especially with the politically incorrect scenes about neo-Nazism and the scenes where she is spanking bare bottom butts. Ninagawa certainly knows how to play that part up but how will audiences respond?
The wait to go to the ballgame is too long. That’s when the violence gets amped up to levels that do not quite hit the same appreciable levels as Yoshihiro Nishimura’s (Tokyo Gore Police) products. But this director was not involved in this production. Instead, Yudai Yamaguchi (Meatball Machine) provides most of the direction.
Although the way he introduces the baseball/deathball game feels tacked on. This part of the film is what gorehounds want to get too. Maybe, if this film was just structured differently, then everyone could have cheered the game on than to watch a lengthy character developing message about teamwork. The balance is not quite there. This film just needed to be structured differently.
Overall 4.5 out of 10.
*plays in Victoria, B.C., on Feb 11 – Cineplex Odeon Theatre 2 – 9:30pm.
The film's homepage:
Sushi Typhoon's Homepage
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Posted in: anime movie review,japanese
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