The 1998 Japanese-language movie "Tokyo Eyes," was directed by someone with the very Japanese-sounding name Jean-Pierre Limosin, who also directed "Cinema of Our Time" documentaries about Abbas Kiarostami and Takeshi Kitano, who has a role in "Tokyo Eyes" and whose most recent movie "Novo" (2002) was shot in Spain and in Spanish. The first two movies that pop out of the jumble of my movie memory bank for comparison to "Tokyo Eyes" are Louis Malle's adaptation of Raymond Queneau's comic novel Zazie dans le metro and Terrrence Malick's "Badlands," an incongruous pair. Quite a bit of "Tokyo Eyes" takes place in the Tokyo subway and the central characters have some of the anarchic playfulness of Zazie, but also the alienation and trigger-happiness of Martin Sheen's portrayal of Kit Carruthers, ineffectively restrained by Sissy Spaceck's Holly Sargis in "Badlands."

For those with different material stored in the memory banks and, therefore, not helped by those analogies, "Tokyo Eyes" involves a young Japanese gunman nicknamed "Four Eyes" by the media, and who calls himself "K" (played by Shinji Takeda). who goes around shooting people in Tokyo for aesthetic and offenses and lack of generosity (including a bus driver who is very nasty to a confused Iranian family). K travels by subway. Hinano, a 17-year-old student who lives with her police officer brother (Tetta Sugimoto) who is working the "Four Eyes" rampage case (hampered by an adult inability to understand the motives and connections between the shootings). Hinano who also travels by subway a lot, looks at the police sketch of the shooter and infers that a young man (not wearing glasses) is the much-sought shootist. She tracks him down, but decides not to turn him in.

Instead, she befriends him. He is not sexually interested in her (she clearly makes herself sexually available to him), but having a friend transforms him from being a psychopathic loner. His pistol turns out (1) not to be an ordinary pistol and (2) manages to get into trouble after "Four Eyes" retires. (It does seem that I have been watching an unusual number of movies in which things are not as they seemed to be--Mystic River, Hero, The House of Flying Daggers, Bad Education, Alice et Martin, and, to a much more limited extent The French Connection" and "Hush!".) Of course, I am not going to reveal the twist and the twist of the twist.

What I find most interesting in the movie is the quasi-documentary look at Tokyo (and here, the New York of "The French Connection" is a close analogue, but the subway rides in "Tokyo Eyes" are less eventful than the one in "The French Connection"! or even than those in "Pickpocket" or "Pickup on South Street"...). The cinematographer, Jean-Marc Fabre, also has a name that does not sound Japanese (he also shot the underappreciated "A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries"). "Tokyo Eyes" has an appropriate techno (not my style!) soundtrack supplied by Xavier Jamaux (all these Japanese names!).

Hinano Yoshikawa (who, unfortunately, has not made any more movies and only appeared in a supporting role in one movie before "Tokyo Eyes") makes the odd (by any culture's standards) behavior of the screen character Hinano seem at least possible, and holds her own with the more flamboyant antics of Shinji Takeda's K (not the least of which is his vigilante rampage). Takeda is a nerdish cartoon-fan's notion of cool with unruly locks (buried under a stocking cap or sweatshirt hood when he is out punishing those he considers wrong-doers) Although playing a vigilante punishing those he regards as wrongdoers in a very big city, he is not very much like Robert De Niro in "Taxi Driver." He's much less scary, for one thing.

The marquee-name from the cast list, Takehashi "Beat" Kitano, plays a punchdrunk low-level yakusa enforcer. The basis for his being acquainted with K is mysterious, but as comic a figure as he seems to be, he is connected to the real world of crime and trails trouble in his wake. It seems to me that the yakusa's intrusion throws the pace and mood of the movie off track.

"Tokyo Eyes" is somewhat akin to "Bad Education" in incongruously mixing comic absurdity and crimes (and in that the crimes differ substantially from the immediately apparent ones). I know from the unease of some with what I consider the great masterpiece Malena (and with Giuseppe Tornatore's earlier "The Star Maker") that genre-blurring disturbs some viewers.

BTW, despite including many shootings, there is no blood. And, as I've already indicated, no sex. The goings on in the anomie of the urban jungle depart from "traditional family values" and very definitely show the formation of a family of choice. Soooooooooo... I enjoyed the movie and found it morally uplifting (though not by conventional imposition). Some others would not.

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The Universe DVD I have (not the one shown here) has talent files on Kitano and the two young leads and a wordless theatrical trailer. I learned that Shinji Takeda is a Japanese tv start and that both he and Hinano Yoshikawa have issued music recordings.


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD