Cold Fish [DVD]

Great movie based on a true story. Fantastic performances throughout, and great direction from Shion Sono. However be warned, this film is very brutal and disturbing in places and doesn't hold back with some of its violent scenes, especially against women.

The Blu-Ray picture is mostly decent, but does suffer during the night sequences.

Overall I recommend this movie - it is powerful, raw filmaking at its best.

Based loosely upon a real life incident involving dog breeders in Saitama Prefecture, Cold Fish instead switches its focus to tropical fish sellers, following the meek and useless family man Shamoto (Mitsuru Fukikoshi), who runs a small shop whilst trying, and generally failing, to maintain his relationships with his second wife Taeko (Megumi Kagurazaka) and teenage daughter Mitsuko (Hikari Kajiwara). A chance encounter introduces him to fellow fish retailer Murata (Denden), who runs a far larger and more successful establishment, staffed by young girls and his strange wife. Though Murata seems friendly enough, if a little pushy, everything changes when Shamoto witnesses him brutally murdering an investor and is coerced into helping with the disposal of the corpse.

His previously ordered world is turned upside down as Murata pulls him into his life of excess and insanity, at the same time changing forever his role within his own stagnating family unit. This film is impossible to fit into any neat category. Its part horror, part black comedy (its extremely funny at times), part serial killer movie, with a huge dollop of allegory about business and Japanese society. And its also a hoot - brilliant acting and direction keeps you hooked as the film gets gorier and gorier.

The entire cast is compelling as a group of seemingly ordinary people who are teetering on either side of major personality disorders. And its not always clear who the real psychopaths are. Only the fish seem normal. Possibly the strangest thing about Cold Fish, and what marks it most decisively as another master work from Sono Sion is the fact that despite its incredible excess and abundance of madness, it remains highly philosophical, and in its own way is a deeply personal film, an internal horror show of insecurity exaggerated and thrown up on screen for all to see. Easily one of the best films of the last year, at least for fans of the director and those brave enough to enter his warped world, it stands as yet another classic from Sono, and as a truly original and unique piece of modern cinema.

Contains some dazzling acting performances based upon living in an alienated world where paranoia binds people together in acts of bonding. A man lives a loveless life with his second wife and step daughter. The daughter hates the new mother and rebels.

As she embarks upon a stealng spree she becomes caught and this sets up the plot. Our hero is introduced to the man without boundaries. The film dissects humiliation, gender roles, subservience and the ability to transcend roles.

Brutal, vicious, especially towards the end, it revels in a particular Japanese film fetish os pure unadulterated oozing gore, probably one of the nastiest films I have watched. The unfolding life of the hero is the key interest as he loses his romantic self to become the opposite after being goaded by his mentor.

Alienated from his wife and daughter, this being a Japanese film, do not expect it all to end with the loose ends resolved as it twists turns and slices through a tale of a man who loses his soul. Unlike the other surface slashers this concentrates on psychological insight. The women are beaten and raped toys, whilst the men are trapped within various codes of ritual humiliation, stretching back to their lost childhoods. The pounding desire to make amends becomes a subconscious driving theme.

Loses a star for the endng which lost some of its sparkle. However in between the viewer is treated to a labyrinth where a man's mind is slowly colonised by hatred until he becomes the opposite of himself.