Goda (Shinya Tsukamoto) is a successful director of television commercials - very loosely based, Tsukamoto states, on a man who in the 1970s was called the "Kurosawa of TV commercials" - with a serious, seemingly normal girlfriend of ten years. In the films first few minutes, however, Goda returns home to find her dead: suicide. The police discover that the fun she used was obtained from ties she had, unbeknownst to Goda, with the underworld. Goda's life is instantly changed, though for a short while he is able to keep up appearances, as his entire life is taken over by his urge for vengeance against those who provided his girlfriend with the means to kill herself. For the first (and strongest) half of the film, Goda's life sinks to one objective that controls his every action: obtaining a gun. Along the way, he comes upon the young thugs that he feels caused his girlfriend's death, including another young woman, Chisato (Kirina Mao), who will in many ways echo the behavior of Goda's late lover. When Goda eventually gets his gun by marrying a Korean immigrant, it is soon taken from him. And here, the film falls apart. the thief, Goto (Takahiro Murase), is forced to kill a random individual (he gets to choose, his boss just wants someone to die), but Goto's choice somehow brings a seemingly random hitman (Hisashi Igawa) upon the young gangsters, and in the film's corpse-laiden finale, shows the young people just how dangerous the stakes are in the "games" they play. This last half works fine on paper, but feels awkward, random, and heavy handed in execution.

Wearing nearly half a dozen different hats (including director, writer, director of photography, lead actor, and editor), Tsukamoto somehow manages, as he so often does, to fulfill his responsibilities with a talent, creativity, and energy that is rare even in films when each of those positions are filled by a different individual. Perhaps most notable, however, is his work as the film's director. As such, he manages to weave together elements of various important directors (both from Japanese cinema of the past and Tsukamoto's own international contemporaries). At different moments in the film, he evokes the wild, handheld style of Kinji Fukasaku, the dream-like beauty of Wong Kar-Wai's contemporary films (a sequence where Chisato invades Goda's apartment might have been a deleted scene from Chungking Express), the artistic experimentation of Seijun Suzuki, and, in some of the film's most memorable moments, a unique, almost neo-realistic, take on Eisenstein's montage theory. The film is beautiful to behold, and the care that Tsukamoto obviously put into every frame and every interaction pays off, even if the logic of the events themselves starts to rip the film apart.

As the film's lead actor, Tsukamoto is as good as ever when he calls upon himself to be the generally dry and cold Japanese everyman, with moments of explosive emotion, that has, after a 10 or 15 year hiatus, become so popular again in Japanese cinema. The rest of the cast is generally good as well, but any nuances they may or may not attempt to add to their roles get swallowed up in Tsukamoto's ultra-stylish world, rendering the characters realistic. Tsukamoto successfully imbues Bullet Ballet with the air of a documentary, and in so doing renders each of the performances invisible.

BULLET BALLET's problems are all inherent in the story, a real pity since the film is one of the closest to Tsukamoto's heart. It took reportedly ten or fifteen years from his original concept to Screen. Sadly, but not necessarily surprisingly, this original concept is the film's ending, where an older, war-hardened assassin teaches young hoodlums the terror of violence by forcing them to experience death; Tsukamoto may have been so blinded by his love for this long-held idea that, in creating BULLET BALLET's concept, he couldn't see what a destructive change of pace and tone it would be for the film overall. Still, BULLET BALLET marks a decided shift in Tsukamoto as an artist, and in a variety of ways is a truly mystifying film. It may not be one of his masterpieces, but it is a crucial and intriguing film in his development as a director.

"Bullet Ballet" focuses on an ordinary Japanese man named Goda. He works as a TV commercial director and maintains a nice apartment with his girlfriend of ten years. Coming home from work one day, Goda finds that his girlfriend has inexplicably shot herself in the head with a gun. Not only is he mortified at her sudden death but he is completely baffled as to how she got her hands on such a weapon. Japan has stricter gun laws than the US and, from this film, it seems like only the police really carry them. From here Goda becomes obsessed with getting to the bottom of both mysteries: why his girlfriend killed herself and just how a person can find a gun in Tokyo.

Surprisingly, Tsukamoto actually casts himself in the lead role. I didn't even realize this until after I viewed the film. I just assumed that Tsukamoto was a professional Japanese actor I hadn't seen before. He's honestly that good. What's so brilliant and unsettling about Tsukamoto's performance is that he looks and acts so mild-mannered and reserved, like a polite high school teacher you may have had, that it makes his transformation into a violent militant all the more frightening and real.

A particular scene comes to mind that characterizes the entire film: when Tsukamoto finally gets his hands on a gun, he goes to a dance club to confront some punks who mugged him. Inside the club is a vibrant underworld of pulsating lights and writhing young people. The camera seems to move to the beat of the industrial music that blares through the speakers and we're lost just like Tsukamoto as he tries to find his way through a sea of bodies. We then travel inside a tiny room where a man and a woman are having what may or may not be consensual sex; as the woman's face is awkwardly pressed against a glass window that overlooks the club, the man casually explains to her that there is no such thing as paradise.

This scene is indicative of "Bullet Ballet" as a whole. It's a bleak and wild journey down the rabbit hole that is modern Tokyo. The camera is constantly moving and the audience has no choice but to be thrust into the chaotic lives of these people, young men and women compelled by internal forces they don't understand. These characters are constantly flirting with death and chasing an impossible high they will never reach.

The grimy black and white photography underscores the bleakness and depression inherent in the story. Many directors these days favor using jerky hand-held cameras and quick cuts, but too often it comes out as an incoherent mess. Fortunately Tsukamoto realizes that movies, like music, have their own tempo and rhythm. His editing is masterful, moving past the realm of film and music videos into something else, more like a "live performance" as he describes in an interview on Wea Corp's recently released DVD. "Bullet Ballet" admittedly loses some of its focus and momentum during the last half-hour but overall it is a tour de force of industrial filmmaking. If you can handle the dark subject matter then definitely watch this film ASAP!