Smash Cut

Oh yeah! It’s got police (satirized in a kind of Starship Troopers-esque way), it takes place in Tokyo, and, well, it’s got gore. Buckets and gallons of it!

Eihi Shiina — who became a bit of a cult sensation in the States after starring in prolific madman Takashi Miike’s nerve-wracking Audition — plays the sword-wielding Ruka, a high-strung policewoman on a mission to rid a near-future cityscape of homicidal mutants while seeking revenge for her father’s murder.

Made by the same creative team responsible for the over-the-top Machine Girl (another movie that mirrors the promise of its title), Tokyo Gore Police delivers the psychotronic goods. Totally transgressive in almost every way (you won’t see equivalents for its effects and set-pieces coming out of Hollywood anytime soon, let me tell you), and with loopy action sequences choreographed by Tak Sakaguchi of the zombie action smash Versus, the film’s a guaranteed night of sanguine insanity if you can stomach it. There are, to be sure, some slow bits (you know, when some perfunctory plotting gets in the way of the outlandish visuals…the script is not its strongest point), but in the end it’s safe to say that anyone who makes it to the end of this blood-splattered freakout will have found at least one scene that lives up to the statement, “I never saw something like that before!”

The movie will have a limited release in the U.S. (no dates/locations specified yet by distributor Tokyo Shock, although New York’s ImaginAsian Theater hints at a booking soon-ish on their website’s “Coming Soon” section). In the meantime, you can check out the (probably not-so-safe-for-work) trailer over here.