Bullet Ballet

A cult figure for his Tetsuo films and Tokyo Fist, Shinya Tsukamoto is the ultimate auteur: he writes, directs, designs, photographs, edits and stars - surprisingly, he doesn't supply his own critique. Goda is a characteristic role: a middle class worm who turns into a gun-fixated revenge junkie after his girlfriend shoots herself and he's mugged by a gang of street punks. The plot wouldn't translate to America: Goda can't get himself a gun for love or money. The industrial-primitive aesthetic has a ricochet trajectory: jittery, super-fast, elliptical shock cuts, culminating in melancholy death. It's aggro art, intense, gut-felt - but also, like all Tsukamoto's work, numbingly over-stretched.