Tetsuo The Bullet Man (2009)

Director: Shinya Tsukamoto

Screenplay: Shinya Tsukamoto and Hisakatsu Kuroki

Cast: Eric Bossick as Anthony; Akiko Monô as Yuriko; Yûko Nakamura as Mitsue; Stephen Sarrazin as Ride; Tiger Charlie Gerhardt as Tom; Prakhar Jain as Elliott; Shinya Tsukamoto as The Guy

In the year of my birth 1989, Shinya Tsukamoto made his theatrical debut Tetsuo the Iron Man, causing a seismic wave across the globe. In 1992, after a failed attempt at being a commercial filmmaker (Hiruko The Goblin (1991)), Tsukamoto made Tetsuo II: The Body Hammer which is held in as high regard. Come 2009, after a career of huge highs (Tokyo Fist (1995), Bullet Ballet (1998), A Snake in June (2002)), and another stint in more mainstream filmmaking, he returns to the Tetsuo world with a film premiered at the 2009 Venice Film Festival....

...it has been effectively deleted from cultural memory. The Bullet Man is in itself a culmination of an English language adaptation, leading to Tsukamoto instead deciding to have his new Tetsuo whilst set in Japan have an American character Anthony (Eric Bossick), living in the country with his wife Yuriko (Akiko Monô). It is effectively remaking The Body Hammer as the catalyst as the murder of their young son is the same shocking incident here too, revealing a secret side of him when the mild mannered foreign salaryman starts transmogrifying into a blackened metal machine man. Tsukamoto himself, again as the antagonist for the third time in this series, is a hacker who wants to reveals Anthony's true origins through his father's work.

The immediate thing of note is that, whilst there is Japanese spoken dialogue, a lot of this film is in English. It's stilted at times, though this isn't like strange experience Sukiyaki Western Django (2007), a pulpy western by Takashi Miike with phonetically spoken English by the whole cast, where there is some Japanese dialogue and actors like Bossick, whose career is actually found more in videogame acting like the Silent Hill and Metal Gear Solid franchises. Instead the result is that some are left strained by the creative choice, like actress Akiko Monô who is struggling with the language barrier, whilst others like Tsukamoto himself feel more comfortable even if it's still an odd choice, in his case helped by his surprisingly good history of onscreen performances in his belt since his first film Tetsuo The Iron Man. I think some of the dialogue is ridiculous and where some of the problems with this choice stand out instead. The Bullet Man at times is less the conclusion of this incredible series, but closer to a lurid nineties anime released by Manga Entertainment in the nineties with a cheesy English dub.

For myself, coming to The Bullet Man with lowered expectations, the issues that stand out in reviews is a) the English language dub, b) the low budget digital camera, and c) that this has the most structurally conventional plot with some lore. I will argue the low budget digital camera is not an issue even if there are moments of excessive shaky camera in scenes which can be disorientating to extreme. In fact, I would argue this brings the film to the modern day when one of the virtues of the original Tetsuo: The Iron Man was that it was the cinematic equivalent of placing one's head in a garbage compactor. It was a cheap and resourceful film which used oil for blood, rewarding for its disorientating chaos which is transferred to The Bullet Man by the stark use of a digital camera. This also feels in hindsight a test run for Kotoko (2011). His film after, a psychological drama that becomes a horror tale about a psychologically ill mother, Kotoko is much higher regarded but also deploys this stark aesthetic style as well, the starkness and habit of shaking the camera become a toll for putting the viewer on edge between these two films.

Plot wise, I think for myself the real issue with The Bullet Man is that it feels like a regression of a director that for all his reputation for intensity grew into the least expected humane film maker. Oddly, in his industrial sound tracked and violent films, even at The Body Hammer Tsukamoto became fixated on the human condition in all its forms over a string of incredible films, literalising everything from grief to rage to desire through literalising them physically and without sacrificing the emotional core.  There a semblance of this eventually in The Bullet Man, but there is definitely felt more the vein of a conventional "cult" film on the surface when it is getting into an abandoned military project and revenge, tropes Tsukamoto could tackle but felt more the kind of detail in a generic Japanese pulp film imported to the West on DVD than from him. Some of it is the kind of material he could tackle with haunting detail, [MAJOR SPOILER] like the fact Anthony's mother was already dead and resurrected as a form of android before conceiving him [SPOILER ENDS], alongside the fact that this is still a story of a man overcoming the grief of losing his son and having clearly had to suppress rage due to his father's overprotective attitude, something I will get to a bit later in more detail.

The other aspect of Tsukamoto's growth was that, at Tetsuo II: The Body Hammer no less, his female characters grew in depth and how they were treated, to the point they were usually the person most sympathetic of the cast, even the one person who has a euphoric conclusion with Tokyo Fist. Even the original Tetsuo film, with the infamous penis drill, has the detail that the actress in that film Kei Fujiwara was the co-cinematographer with Tsukamoto himself, a distinct figure onscreen who also became a director I wished made more films¹. (She also helped put together that penis drill, so she at least had work with the prop in her infamous scene in the film²). I'm glad The Bullet Man itself led to Kotoko with singer Cocco, but ooh this felt like a step back in terms of Akiko Monô playing a really generic wife figure, whose only depth is needing revenge and also being in peril. It is a bad regression even next to Tsukamoto's first film, where Fujiwara was at least striking in her role.

Why I wish The Bullet Man was not buried culturally however is that, for all the flaws, there is so much to show that Tsukamoto is still a bar higher than most filmmakers even at his weakest, a director who mostly made his own independent work with a strong visual eye. His work has ideas and is so intense he makes most cult films anaemic even with this, one of his weakest films. Little details, like his own face distorted on a computer screen, manically laughing as an email reveals Anthony his origins, are enough as visual motifs Tsukamoto has always been good with in keeping a viewer on edge. That intensity, which puts him on a higher level than most cult directors from Japan, is even found here with editing the slices the visual flesh and wounds a viewer.

The music is also, as always, a great tool of his, the late Chu Ishikawa finishing the Tetsuo trilogy with his calamitous work, the audio equivalent of a metal recycling plant. Notable Nine Inch Nails provided a main theme of noise transforming into air siren-like triumphant bridges. It is an instrumental of unconventional beauty, and arguably of importance as not only was it a goal finally completely between both groups, but one of the first times Trent Reznor with Atticus Ross producing a track for a film. This would lead to a beautiful and ongoing friendship between The Social Network (2010) to even Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's television documentary series The Vietnam War (2017), so we could thank Shinji Tsukamoto for helping begin this relationship among other factors.

The practical design is also exceptional still, especially as being inspired by old Japanese genre films Tsukamoto even called his studio Kaijyu Theater after giant monster movies, Tsukamoto never hiding the handmade quality of his films' practical effects. Eric Bossick is okay as a lead, but the literal Bullet Man is a thing of disturbing beauty, both sleek in his black metal form which grows the more he is wounded, but also a literal human weapon combined with a id of rage being literalised by guns spurting out of injuries to fire back. Whilst it is not to be everyone's cup of tea, when The Bullet Man jumps into noise and screaming and delirious practical effects, it feels less like the cheesiness of a film like Tokyo Gore Police (2008) from the era, a rubbery gore experience, but a tangible brutal experience.

Thankfully, after this Tsukamoto after a period of absence in the Western consciousness returned with pride. This was the era he started restoring his own work, released in the United Kingdom through Third World Pictures (and Arrow Video in the USA in the 2020s), helping his reputation considerably alongside a string of films which got attention through the likes of Third Window. If anything, The Bullet Man is a flawed film, especially when against another pure genre work of his like Haze (2005), which is abstract and striped down to an extreme, it feels lesser to. It is still a tier higher than most work because it is from Shinji Tsukamoto however. Rather than hiding it as an embarrassment, Tetsuo The Bullet Man deserves to be brought up as a curiosity in his work.

Abstract Spectrum: Chaotic/Psychotronic

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

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1) Organ (1996) and the even stranger Ido (2005) deserve to be restored and made more easily avaible. They are two films that buckle the trend of "safe" filmmaking whilst showing her personal voice. Organ is a ninety lurid Japanese pulp film which manages to be more gross and uncomfortable than most, grimy body horror, whilst being uniquely surreal at many points. Ido, originating from a sequel to Organ, pulls in her history with theatre in a bizarre mindmelter of Buddhist theology, lurid body horror and batshit weirdness as Fujiwara herself turns into a pig monster at some point.

2) "For the latter, Tsukamoto just wanted to make something simple and said it would be enough if we could just pretend like it was moving, but I thought it would only be interesting if it actually moved. I didn’t have any hi-tech skills, so I thought, “That’s it!” I took the nearest working electric fan, dissembled it down to its core, used all the rubber and tape I had at home, sprayed it up and got it to go, vroom [laughs]!!" - Kei Fujiwara [LINK HERE]