with an introduction by Dean Amythe

If there is substance abuse there must also be style abuse. With Tokyo Fist, Shinya Tsukamoto (known also for Tetsuo: The Iron Man and Bullet Ballet) pushes the film body to its limit and beyond. A terrific example of the crazy formalism of the 90s, this Terry Gilliam-Dario Argento-Tom Tykwer-David Cronenberg fusion of fever dream expressionism, rapid montage and frantic camerawork captures the fragile masculinities underneath iron muscles underneath power structures and meaninglessness. How to express oneself in impregnable systems and sorry lives, how to escape indestructible, towering office buildings and dead-end jobs but through the mutilation of a body, be it someone else’s or your own? What doesn’t kill you makes you at last feel alive. 30 years on, in an age of masculine crises and looksmaxxing, this gonzo film about a cuckold reclaiming his manhood through boxing and bodily destruction yet leaves us in a daze, disoriented and with ringing ears.   

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