Rating of
3.5/4
The Urge of Metal
industrialist - wrote on 10/08/09
Industrial strength cyberpunk - hyper-violent, raw, unnerving - that, 20 years on, remains as kore to the rivethead manifesto as 'Varsity Blues' does for dirtbags. It's an archaic, black-and-white oddity by contemporary standards, but Tsukamoto's unflinching filmmaking, fusing twisted visuals and feverish cinematography with an abrasive score, pumps it beyond its low-budget origins and forges a dynamism and enigmaticness that trash like 'Ultraviolet' struggles to achieve. This was 'Death Powder' and 'Eraserhead' thrown into the furnace and incrementing the resultant hybrid into something even more brooding and destructive. Bio-cyber transformations unlock dormant perversions, drill-sex finalizes the intersection of steel and skin, and engines of chaos clash across an unwitting city leaving mechanized flesh in their rusting aftermath. In short, this is expo for the metal fetishist.
