Tetsuo: The Bullet Man

Plot synopsis:
Anthony is a man with an American father and a deceased Japanese mother living and working in Tokyo. One day his son is run over and killed by Yatsu, this film's version of "The Metal Fetishist". Shortly afterward Anthony begins to transform into metal. He discovers that the work of his scientist father may be the key to his transformation. In his father's house he discovers a secret room with files and papers detailing the Tetsuo Project as a way to turn people into androids. He also learns that his father met his mother while they each researched the project. Anthony's wife arrives but before she sees her transformed husband a S.W.A.T. team arrives and she is taken hostage. Anthony's transformation finishes its hold and he defeats the S.W.A.T. team with bullets fired from his body, but refrains from killing them. The severely injured team is extracted, but then killed by Yatsu.
Anthony's father then calls to him and his wife to explain everything: Anthony's mother was disgusted with the outcome of the Tetsuo project, having joined it as a way to help give crippled and sick people new bodies. When Anthony's mother realized that she would soon die from cancer, she insisted that her husband recreate her as a Tetsuo android so that he may still have a child with his recreated wife. That child became Anthony, which means that Anthony and his late son were always part Tetsuo. Meanwhile, Yatsu realizes that the only way he will find peace is to be shot by Anthony's body. Yatsu and Anthony have a final confrontation in which Anthony's wife is nearly killed. Anthony's rage and transformation reaches its pinnacle and he becomes a gigantic metal beast with a cannon in his center. Yatsu provokes and threatens Anthony to shoot him. Finally, Anthony denies this wish and instead consumes Yatsu whole into his metal body and then returns to human form. Five years later Anthony and his wife and new child have returned to a normal, contented life. As he stands before a mirror he hears Yatsu's final words: "You don't know what I'll do." However, when a group of young thugs attempt to intimidate him while walking down the street, rather than allow his anger to overtake him, he simply walks calmly and confidently past them.

Tags: absurd, psychedelic, violence, sci-fi

Review:
Shinya Tsukamoto's original Tetsuo: The Ironman is most certainly one of my formative cinematic experiences.
I remember watching it for the first time one night with a friend in his parents' basement the summer after my freshman year at college.
The film was just blowing us away, and we were very loud about how awesome and freaky it was.
Tsukamoto had won a fan for life in me, and, indeed, I have very much liked every single piece of work he's produced that I've had the pleasure to see.
The third Tetsuo movie is no exception.
Half-Japanese, half-white Eric Bossick plays the title character here.
When Bossick gets upset, he becomes a metallic, murderous monster.
The story is pretty silly (Bossick has "android DNA" because his dad made it with a robot version of his mom), but it's all about the images, the violence, and the Lovecraftian horror.
There is one major aspect that will detract from the film's value for some: it's in English.
I'm guessing that Tsukamoto felt that this would give the film wider appeal, not only because it could be released in English speaking countries unsubtitled, but in other countries, too, where a good amount of people can understand English.
That's a bad plan, though, as most fans of this type of stuff, especially in the United States, where the film still hasn't opened except for perhaps at some film festivals, much prefer the Japanese films they watch to be in Japanese.
Or perhaps it's about the fact that most of the actors just aren't very good, which makes their dialogue come off rather poorly, or even laughably.
And other actors, most notably Shinya Tsukamoto himself, who co-stars as the villain, has a sometimes incomprehensible accent.
It comes off somewhat like the English dialogue in Takashi Miike's Sukiyaki Django Western, kind of weird and almost hypnotic..
Tetsuo: The Iron Man - A film so manic, hyper, weird, and stylish, it represented the epitome of an experimental film.
David Lynch would have gouged his eyes out.Tetsuo II: Body Hammer - A sequel so intense and crazy, it took the strange visions of the first film and spat them out at the viewer in a refreshing barrage of insanity.The third Tetsuo film, The Bullet Man, is pretty much more of the same.
You can certainly expect the film to break out in hyperactive bombardments of flashing rapid-fire images.
You can certainly expect the main character to mutate into a metal monster and wreak some havoc (and this time, he spits bullets!).
You can certainly expect this to be weird and crazy.However, this Tetsuo film is notably different, and not in a way that's refreshing or necessarily good.
In between the manic freak-out scenes, the film slows down drastically, trying its best to weave in some semblance of an actual story with actual characters and actual reasons behind the madness.
With the terrible dialogue, short runtime, and overall freakiness of the film, I really don't think this story works as well as it wants to.
The film really wants to give a compelling vengeance story (the exact same type that went into the last two films), it really wants to give us emotional characters, and it wants to give us some kind of background to the "Tetsuo Project" and its connection to the characters.
In the end though, it comes off as being too short and underdeveloped for its own good.The experience of the film overall is pretty agitating.
Granted, the other Tetsuo films are agitating as hell, but The Bullet Man seems to be a grade worse.
Given the other issues listed above, I was rather apathetic about the film overall.
I actually value the other two films for their remarkable styles and visions, even though they are pretty hyperactive in their own right, but this third film never felt like it brought anything new to the table.In addition to being really hyper and annoying, the film is rather drab-looking, with lots of dark lighting and gray settings.
On the plus side, the sets, props, and costumes are pretty decent, and it's especially cool to see that the filmmakers preferred to use practical effects rather than cheap CGI.
Music consists of lots of airy noises and metallic banging, further adding to the annoying experience.As much as I value the first two Tetsuo movies, I couldn't bring myself to enjoy The Bullet Man as much as I wanted to.
I halfway wonder if Shin'ya Tsukamoto is purposefully trying to make the most annoying movie possible.
Established Tetsuo fans will probably enjoy The Bullet Man, but casual viewers will probably want to keep their distance.
I personally recommend the first film, if at all interested.2/5 (Experience: Annoying | Story: Very Poor | Film: Marginal).
Similar to the first two movies, Bullet Man is an alternate retelling of the same story.
Plotwise its what you'd expect in a Tetsuo-film.Bullet Man is certainly among Tsukamoto's most experimental films, but in a completely different way, due to its casting decisions, and the bold choice of shooting the dialog entirely in English(with few exceptions), unlike Takashi Miike's Sukiyaki Western Django, the dialog in this movie is in fact comprehensible.
Its very obvious that Tsukamoto was aiming for a broader audience, but it didn't work quite as well.
I must admit that I was skeptical to Bossick in the lead role, but he is actually very well casted, his character is different from Taguchi, but still similar, he is a bit more stable, but furious at the same time.
Akiko Monou as Bossick's wife on the other hand doesn't work that well, its a dull performance mostly because of her dialog being in English.
The chemistry between the two leads isn't present either, but this gets better as the film progresses, and then there is good old Shinya Tsukamoto as " The Guy " you'd be disappointed that he doesn't reprise his role as the metal fetishist, but he still play a pretty bad-ass character, and its a great performance.The digital look of the film is not working in its favor at all, yet there are lots of trademark shots from the previous films, like the close ups of machinery etc, and Chu Ishikawa's industrial theme, are all present, and its shot in the same frenetic manner, but the gritty, and raw 16mm look is absent.The Bullet Man, seems more like an American remake of the first film, it has this mainstream feel to it, and doesn't rely that much on symbolism and metaphors, like the first two films.
Another big letdown is, this time there is no mutated counterpart for protagonist to fight, instead we have a bunch of army guys.
I would still recommend this to all Tsukamoto fans.
It's different, and not among his best, but that doesn't necessarily mean that its bad.
If you know Tsukamoto's other films and you have already seen Tetsuo 1, at the vision of this one you will be unsatisfied.
You will not recognize the original Tsukamoto storytelling, where you must evince everything about the story only by images, and not from an actor that speak and explain what happened since that scene of the movie.
The good thing you can find in the first one or in the other movies by this author are that you must concentrate on the movie, on the images to be able to understand, and the images make you stay on your sit with your eyes open and your mind full operative.
But this chapter of the Tetsuo saga is not that kind of film.
It's more similar to an American movie than a Tsukamoto movie.
I don't understand if it's Tsukamoto changing or it's only because this was an American co-production.
Maybe someone who don't know Tsukamoto will appreciate it for it's fine director's style or for the incomparable music, but it's better if you make a comparison with the first one, that will remain an absolute masterpiece, 20 years before, a lot of money less.
Still,this is a remake, with a lot of changes in the story, but not in the message the author wants to tell us!.
Unfortunately there is almost nothing good to say about this film.The camera is so shaky that it's hard to recognize things in the picture.
If watched on a big cinema screen, it would have made me vomit.Dialogs are mostly pathetic and acting is very poor, many times over the top.
At times it's even difficult to understand what they are saying, because of the strong (bad) accent.Many scenes are tediously long, dark and the "music" is too loud.I really tried to like this film, but I couldn't.I think it's good, when directors try to be daring, but some seem to forget that they are not making a film for themselves, but they want it to be viewed by others.
If so, maybe it's not wrong to try to make a film watchable (visually pleasant) as well..
I was recommended this movie from a friend as he loved it but I didn't I'm afraid, I can't really give a true review of this movie due to fact that I haven't seen any of the previous movies or any of tsukamoto's previous work, so I will not comment on the story itself but tell you the truth I watched it as I thought it was going to be an action flick with many body parts flying around but this wasn't the case and the camera work was very shaky and it was very difficult to know what was going on, If like me you have not seen any of tsukamoto's previous work don't waste your time, but if you really feel the need to watch it all I can suggest is watch the previous movies first to give you at least a certain incl-in of what is going on..
- struck me as a rather mercenary move by Tsukamoto when I first heard about it, and as the first film is so important to me (being what opened my eyes to cinema beyond Hollywood, and remaining in my all time top 20 to this day) I approached this with slight trepidation.
Fortunately, this is very much a Tetsuo movie through and through, largely uncompromised by commercial thoughts, and as frenetic, fast paced and blistering as ever.
The basic plot – a man mutates into metal after a traumatic incident – remains, but the movie still throws up fresh and unexpected ideas throughout.
The decision to have it in English does lead to the occasional stilted feeling in the dialogue, but this is a minor point.
Overall, while nowhere near the heights of the first film, it's comfortably about equal to Tetsuo II: Body Hammer, which is far more than I expected..
On a positive note, this movie does not resort to using CGI or other crappy special effects.
The costume did the job well enough for this movie.Sound was one of my first issues with this film.
There was some metal rifts that were pretty loud.
Then the dialog would come in and either I was suffering from deafness or the actors would whisper their lines.I never have been a fan of shaky cam filming, but this goes way beyond shaky cam to earth quake cam.
The noise, flashes, and bombarding images are just like some hardcore death metal videos.It takes forever for the origins to be discovered and then the last 20 minutes of the film the "bad guy" -with poor motive- gives the Bullet Man just 60 seconds to kill him...
some how 20 minutes = 60 seconds doesn't seem to fit.Overall a poor movie, I have watched worse.
Maybe it would be better as an anime or if I was a big fan of the creator of this film..
OK it seems that Shinya Tsukamoto decided to update his series even more to modern times and also put himself in the movie again.
I guess you could say this was a revamp of the first, but a different story.
I am not saying this is a bad film though.
Some good things about it was the nice grim colors to give it a creepier feel and the story was not confusing.
But becoming the bullet man in this film was way over the top and it got to the point where it was really crazy; then calm.
Eric Bossick was a pretty decent actor and the only one I really cared about.
A couple bad things.
The story was a bit over the top and the voices were really hard to understand at points.
Other than that, it was a decent film..
Man, I don't ever try to understand these 'Tetsuo' movies anymore and simply go along for the ride.
And this surely is one intense and very visually orientated ride, that I overall really enjoyed.Once more, the budget has significantly gone up, when you compare it to the previous 2 movies and of course the original first student film that got made by Shinya Tsukamoto, before he created his first full length movie of the series.
And yes, I can definitely say that this is the best looking movie out of the series.
It's a movie with a great style and atmosphere over it.Yes, it's also definitely a weird movie, in which lots is happening and stuff is being left mostly to the imagination, or rather said; an actual story is hard to find.
Though I must admit that out of all the movies out of the series, this one is probably making the most sense with its story but that's not saying much really.
But then again, people won't watch this movie expecting a clever or provoking story.
They'll expect a visual and intense experience most likely, just like I did.
When you do, "Tetsuo: The Bullet Man" is a movie that won't disappoint you.And how awesome is it that the main character of this movie is the bullet man, who shoots dozens of bullets from his body, ever time he goes into Hulk-mode.
It's truly something awesome, that got done quite well visually, with some nice effects and make-up.You can also really definitely say that Shinya Tsukamoto keeps on improving as a director, though it might be argued that this is also thanks to the higher budgets he's receiving to work with.7/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/.
Someone is chasing the camera man....
I always wondered what happened to those who were at "The Blair Witch Project", they worked as the camera crew in this movie.
The action/fight scenes in this movie is too shaky for something to register on screen as if the camera man is being chased by the Blair Witch.I never heard of the director before but may have a very promising career.
The accent of the Japanese actors in this film is in a way difficult to understand at times.I totally agree with the two other reviewers that says "you probably have to be a fan to enjoy this" and "For Die-Hard fans only".
The story is weird and confusing at times but still in a way entertaining.Overall, the movie is watchable..
This was not a bad movie.
It didn't have the experimental look of the first Tetsuo flick; however, that's been done.
only much longer and with a mostly Japanese cast...The movie is about a man who, due to a genetic experiment with his mother, sprouted metal parts and guns when angered.
It was kind of like the Incredible Hulk if that movie had been directed by David Lynch.
The acting is mediocre, but the images are definitely powerful.If Francis Bacon made a movie with Rob Zombie, this is what it would look like....
Tetsuo: The Bullet Man. Anthony, a half-American/half-Japanese technological businessman in Tokyo, discovers after the cold-blooded murder of his son, when his anger towards the man responsible fuels a reaction he couldn't possibly have prepared for, that he has "android DNA" causing his body to slowly metamorphose into a machine.
Director Shinya Tsukamoto also stars as the villain who runs over Anthony's son Tom with a car—what's his motivation?
More story here—as Anthony learns a startling secret about his mother, attempts to console his grieving wife who wants revenge for the death of her child, and tries to keep from continuing to evolve into a metal monster—than one might expect from a Tetsuo film.
Too bad Tsukamoto's camera work and editing is so chaotic and epileptic you can't see a damn thing, hoping to actually decipher what is essentially incomprehensible on screen.
Strong story on the power of love and family, however, did surprise me, I must say.
Anthony reads of a scientific project on creating human androids, found in the notes of his father's underground office, which is where he learns the horrifying truth of what he actually is.
Included in the film is a group assigned to eradicate Anthony and Yuriko so that the dangers of an android killing machine rampaging through the streets, a potential threat which might bring blame to those behind Ride's project, would be silenced.
It seems that Tsukomoto's mysterious predator wants to encourage the anger of Anthony so that he will continue to lose control, ending in a climax possibly threatening global catastrophe.
Perhaps Tsukamoto's simply grown weary of his own patented brand of hyperkinetic cinema verite; or maybe the idea well's simply run dry; whatever the reason, TETSUO: THE BULLET MAN is a far cry from the two films that preceded it in this trilogy.
"Destroy all of our lazy peaceful dreams," Tsukamoto himself urges the Bullet Man, and it's his own filmmaking philosophy he's espousing.
But, while we once again have the pounding of hammers on anvils, the fingernails screeching down chalkboards, and the man metamorphosizing into a heavy metal monstrosity, there's something definitely LACKING this time around.
The TETSUO trilogy has lapsed into Formula.
Like PROJECT ARMS or THE GUYVER or any one of a dozen other manga or anime man-into-machine tales, TETSUO has grown stale.