Rap and hip hop are of zero interest in my house, but Sion Sono is crazy and in a very good way.Stories, subplots, wars, battles, violence and heaps and heaps of sexy and gorgeous women with great hair, superb fine legs and all strutting their stuff. It is the stuff of dreams for film fans, seekers of originality and bound to wound up prudes everywhere.I may be a man reacting to skin, but I can tell you Sono knows his stuff. Just enjoy it.By the way the beatbox girl is an actual Japanese artist so you can find her on the Internet if you want.

Well, what can I say? That was something a bit different! If I had known in advance that what I was about to watch was a Japanese hip-hop musical about warring gangs in an alternate Tokyo, I suspect at least a few alarm bells might have gone off. The idea is so wilfully absurd that the movie could easily fall into car crash territory. But you are probably thinking that there is a 'however' coming up here and you would indeed be correct, as in the event Tokyo Tribe proved to be a properly exhilarating movie experience. The originality on display was pretty mind-boggling not just in terms of basic idea but also in execution. There is a story but I realised pretty early on that paying full attention to it was not really a primary requirement. Needless to say, I can't actually be bothered summarising the plot synopsis. What this one is resolutely all about is style over substance. For some viewers that is a cinematic crime but I personally think that we get a little too much 'substance' and not anywhere near enough genuine style in our modern movies. Tokyo Tribe is an example of a film that is great, great style and is pure cinema from start to finish.Seemingly it was based on a manga comic, which isn't exactly surprising given the sheer insanity that unfolds on the screen. It has an extremely colourful aesthetic with great sets and costuming. The look is constantly interesting and surprising, a fantastic spectacle overall. But this crazy film also has most of its dialogue rapped as well. I hadn't even been aware of Japanese hip-hop before this so it was an education I can tell you. The style of filming with lots of long takes was somewhat similar to the style that many rap music videos adopted, so this is another disparate element mixed into the overall concoction. So what do we have here? Well, we have martial arts fighting (although not so much so that it gets overbearing), some good old fashioned sexploitation elements, a beat-boxing maid, a Mr Big gangster with an ever-present dildo, human furniture, a tank driving Samurai, a super-strong black henchman, (very) cute Japanese women of various shapes and sizes, some men with misguided hair-cuts, a wheel of death, a depressed youth in a hoodie who pitches up every so often like a Greek Chorus, comic-book violence and bling weaponry. There is even more going on than this as well but that's the best I can do for now. On the whole, this is a highly entertaining action-comedy-musical with a real energy and originality. This really does define the term one of a kind!

To be clear I have never read the manga it was based off of so some of my comments may be invalid. Tokyo Tribe is seriously just whacked up from angles. Very cool idea to begin with, however, and I do commend them for the way they separated their characters; each very colourful and unique. Colour is one of the things i love about Japanese films, they always have 'em. Also for the record, I have a grasp on how Japanese grammar works so there are times i do pick up a different perspective on their acting sometimes as Japanese comes across in English sometimes as very plain. But you know, i get what they're trying to say...anywayOKAY, acting was ... well, its hard to tell. From one angle each character would have half of their dialogue in rap. But when it comes to a film like this, one can be forgiving because it's mostly just trying to express a message rather than a film straight up about some acting. So i didn't mind that the characters were all jacked up on their own principles and egos. No one really stands out except maybe the 'sumni/sumi' or whatever the hell her name was (had glitchy hard sub). Everyone else i guess acted the way they were supposed to act (presuming in regards to the manga) so nothing really special. No Oscar nominations here LOL u know what i mean? Really was digging the cinematography. City representations of nightlife was pretty cool, semi spot on. The movie did feel like it was on a budget though the characters were always enough to keep your mind guessing. really enjoyed the shots whereby the camera follows the character and things just happen around him. It's like the world froze while they did that. there was some really strange scenes however but nothing too distasteful - it's to be expected what with all the smuttiness and perversion. But yes they did far too many revisits to old locations which was disappointing. And the occasionally really out of place character shots whereby the after a dialogue scene the camera very quickly cuts away to a shot of an not overly important character and that character does something that adds to the archetype or style of the personality being represented.The plot idea was pretty sick but the pacing was quite all over the place. Lots of overbearingly long expository dialogue in the form of rap (ill go more in detail later.) The idea of warring tribes is cool but not really explored, more like introduced and then mashed together. The bad guy in this film is really messed up which is typical of the style but very out of place in terms of rap. like his character or the people in his crew didn't really necessarily need to be rappers. But ill say it does lend to the overall blend. The plot was mostly predictable too, only not when some weird moments were occurring like the beatboxing maid bits and the fastid strokings of a golden dildo. Ending was totally lame though.Script, okay, rap too. I can't fully comment on this because I know I'll be semi- wrong because of the translation. But the rap was OK. What dragged it down was the fact that most of it was expository dialogue. Basically explaining exactly what was happening. And then so much patriarchal archetypal rap. The introduction part was great, you really got a sense of how different each tribe was, through their visual displays and their rap style and beat style. But as the characters crossed over it felt less like a collab and more like the awkward clash of another mans hand touching your buttocks. You feel uncomfortable and it's just plain wrong. There wasn't really much to say on this except the way they depicted chillhop rap was funny albeit quite inaccurate.The music was however not up to standard for a film like this. I honestly expected a well thought out selection of beats and breaks were going to astound me but I was ashamed to find out it was focused mostly and solely on the uniqueness of a group among groups of interloping characters. There were some straight out terrible industrial experimental beats during some of the bad guy scenes and man were they industrially experimentally bad.I wished there were more fight scenes that were more choreographed. Some flashy stuff but mostly one hit per guy sort of fights which can get pretty boring to watch. If it was anything like crow zero now that would be awesome. The rapping throughout a movie could have been done well had the characters been written more thoroughly and less 'this is my style and this is my take on the situation'. The flow separations are cool though it never really got a time to shine through because of the whole bad guy scenes. Too many of those. But great characters, awesome main character; a fighting cute girl who can rap and showed her boobies on screen - thats a real woman im telling ya. Great costumes and really over the top stereotypes. Lots of fun watching this in the sense of sight. In the sense of sight there was always something happening so you could probably still be entertained had the film been silent. Yeah 6/10. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who likes rap unless they were begging me to show them a film about Japanese rappers who rap in different styles, do manga type music things that is illustrated with lots of colour. If i happen to stumble in on someone watching the film I would gladly sit through it again with them to see their reactions and to make comments on how absurdly inane all the scenes were.ps. I'm not a LOL kind of guy.

Shion Sono can, in the case of Love Exposure, make a 4 hour movie feel like a 2 hour movie and in the case of Tokyo Tribe make a two hour movie feel like a four hour movie. A strange showdown in Tokyo between warring crews is a freaking absurd mix between the Warriors, 1970's yakuza flicks, and an entire history of hip hop videos. The beats are tight, the visuals mind-blowing, the whole thing is like a crazy hallucination that is actually closer to way the real world operates than we admit. The set it is filmed on is obviously fake like the rain that hits it, the acting is absurd, the plot simple, but executed however the hell he wants. What is Shion Sono trying to say??? I think everyone that watches Tokyo Tribe at one point has to ask the question they know they shouldn't. I see, hear, and feel this movie. It does drag at times, since they're defiantly rapping almost every line of dialogue. Something about this film makes it the most progressive, subversive, pure cinema yet to be made on such a large scale. It's inaccessible, but mindless. It's mindful and welcoming. Crazy, insane, but completely lucid the entire time. I think it's genius. I think this guy Shion Sono is a genius. Should I admit that again? Oh I guess I already did on his last film.