Survive Style 5+ サバイブスタイル５＋ (2004)

Survive Style 5+   

Japanese: サバイブスタイル５＋

Romaji: Sabaubu Sutairu 5

Release Date: September 25^th, 2004 (Japan)

Running Time: 120 mins.

Director: Gen Sekiguchi

Writer: Taku Tada (Screenplay),

Starring: Tadanobu Asano, Reika Hashimoto, Kyoko Koizumi, Hiroshi Abe, Yosiyosi Arakawa, Sonny Chiba, Kanji Tsuda, Ittoku Kishibe, Yumi Asou, Pierre Taki, Tomokazu Miura, Ryunosuke Kamiki,

What would happen if you remade Pulp Fiction in Tokyo and you substituted the cool for the bizarre and the criminal for the hilarious? Survive Style 5+.

The film takes place in modern day Tokyo with a cross-section of its inhabitants. Within this film, five storylines intertwine and briefly meet:

A man (Tadanobu Asano) repeatedly kills his wife and buries her in a forest. She returns from the dead, quite alive and spoiling for a fight.

An advertising executive named Yoko (Kyōko Koizumi) plans the murder of a lover whilst she imagines a series of increasingly bizarre commercials that her clients (Sonny Chiba) and co-workers struggle to accept.

A suburban family find their lives disrupted after visiting a theatre show hosted by Viva Friends and their salary-man father (Ittoku Kishibe) is hypnotised into believing he is a bird.

A foreign hitman (Vinnie Jones) and his translator (Yoshiyoshi Arakawa) wander around Tokyo completing assignments.

A trio of young men randomly burgle houses, one of them keeping an infatuation for the other hidden.

“What is your function?” Vinnie Jones’ thuggish hitman barks this question at various people. If this film was asked this question it would answer: to provide pure cartoonish entertainment and a dash of sadness.

The film is highly eclectic and entertaining, setting up characters’ who, if they weren’t strange to begin with, become submerged in the strangeness found in Tokyo.

The more openly bizarre a character is the better as one rather furious wife and continual murder victim proves when she puts her husband through hell in a series of hilarious fights.

My particular favourite is the mighty hypnotist Aoyama (Hiroshi Abe), leader of Viva Friends. He is handsome, charismatic and steals his scenes with his super-charged sensuality and, despite being a secondary character, he manages to be highly memorable.

The director Gen Sekiguchi has a background in music videos and advertising and it’s obvious just from watching the film. The ensemble cast clutch unique plot threads done in varying pop styles and while they may not add up to consistent narrative push they are individually fun and visually interesting which gives the film strength.

The director might even be reflected through the character of advertising executive Yoko. Her trials and tribulations with getting people to understand her idiosyncratic imagination probably draw from Sekiguchi’s experience. Her imagination is shown in a series of visually inventive non-sequitur dreams that other people don’t quite get.

With each different narrative strand comes five different candy-coloured sections but the overall visual tone and sharp editing maintains an even consistency in viewing that remains throughout the film regardless of how many times plot threads jump. This helps to keep things fresh and interesting.

Think of the stylised visuals of Park Chan-Wook without Pulp Fiction’s strong criminal-world milieu and you’re there. Or, perhaps, a better example might be if the pan-Asian film, The Three Extremes had its different sections intercut and given a healthy sense of humour and less horror, you would get this. Either way, this is a fun film.