Tetsuo: The Bullet Man (Shinya Tsukamoto, 2009)

Spoilers follow.

What many fans of 1989's Tetsuo: The iron Man may not know is that it was a refinement of an earlier version of the same story. Allow me to place emphasis on 'refinement', because that's precisely what it was – an expansion and further explication of a rather incoherent and meaningless experiment in no-budget filmcraft. The reason I stress this is because there have since been two more Tetsuo films from Shinya Tsukamoto, and both of them have had a lukewarm reception at best from fans who feel that elaborating on the first feature has robbed it of it's essence...moved it from raw anarchic howl toward more conventional cinema. And they're right, it has, but it's only fair to the director to realize that he was already well along on that trajectory back in 1989. Just sayin'.

The son of businessman Anthony (Eric Bossick) is deliberately murdered right before Anthony's eyes. His wife Yuriko (Akiko Monô ) aches for revenge, but to her disgust Anthony cannot bring any kind of emotional reaction to the surface. That is, not until his body begins to morph into a metal instrument of pure rage. The killer comes after them both, leading Anthony to revelations about himself, his parents, and his father's research into recreating the human body through robotics.

In many ways this fourth Tetsuo (third feature film) is a throwback to a part of Tsukamoto's career that he was already finished with and left behind. Specifically it is a remake of sorts of Tetsuo II: Body Hammer, and it had no more creative impetus than the notion of making a Tetsuo film in America. and having the antihero fly. When it came down to it, neither of those made it into the film, except that the salaryman role played before by Tomoro Taguchi was replaced by Bossick, an American Taguchi lookalike. For many it was too little too late. However, I would like to suggest that this Tetsuo could not have been made at any other time in Tsukamoto's career. Where he takes it to is a complete refutation of the earlier films, honoring the spiritual journey his body of work had led him on.

Tsukamoto and co-writer Hisakatsu Kuroki (who co-scripted the Nightmare Detective movies) have pared the story down to the most simplistic possible characterizations and plot resulting in a brisk comic-book (or manga) film (fittingly, Anthony transforms through a number of stages, first looking every bit like a character from Marvel then like a metallic John Merrick – a face that might have inspired the look of The Scarecrow from Nolan's Batman Begin.). At only seventy minutes, it almost feels more of a sketch. Even the performances are lasered in on the moment like comic-book peoples, unnaturally flat or eschewing nuances they are dictated not by normal human responses but by the style of the film. Aesthetically, Bullet Man recreates the chaotic, micro-budget look of the first Tetsuo feature but with a very calculated, high-budget approach: not black and white but digitally desaturated: not grainy, grimy 16mm but crystalline HD. Again, YMMV – I found it exhilarating to see a Tetsuo flick that looks this good, not to mention hearing Chu Ishikawa's original themes again.

What's not readily apparent is the heart of the film. The earlier films – in fact, nearly all of the directors works until recently – had struggled with the conflict between the natural body and an aggressively artificial environment However, Tsukamoto had already succeeded in resolving that conflict, exorcised the demon, and moved on. There was no need to revisit it, and it is not revisited in Bullet Man. The story built around that theme remains, but the theme itself is no longer present as a driving force. 

On the other hand, Bullet Man has a few links to his more recent works. Echoing Vital, a flashback to Anthony's dying mother sees her requesting that her husband dissect her body, study every bit of her and recreate her physically, a request born of a concern for the peace of her continuing spiritual presence. This part of the story is the weakest, and I believe it of less importance thematically than simply owing to the conventional need to flesh out a quick plot. More substance can probably be found in a visual motif Tsukamoto has lately begin using in all his films, that of colorful microscopic footage and renderings of the human body's internal workings. As meticulous as Tsukamoto is with his metaphorical imagery, I'm sure it's not coincidental that the most colorful sequence in the movie has the killer/instigator stand before a gray wall on which a projector is shuffling slides of the human body in medical renderings, brightly colored and superimposed over himself. What it might mean, though, I have to confess goes right over my head. There is also a direct if obvious re-iteration from Nightmare Detective 2 that anger, hate, a refusal to forgive mutates the soul and effectively kills the self.

I'm not convinced that Tetsuo: the Bullet Man is actually exploring anything. That, I think, is what keeps the movie a slight work, neither Tsukamoto nor his characters are striving for meaning and so neither are we the audience asked to do any heavy lifting. Rather than working out a question, Bullet Man stands as a statement of principles from the director, gleaned over a lifetime of exploring his most personal concerns. It plays like a coda to his work thus far, the capping of an era. Iron Man and Body Hammer at the beginning of his professional career embraced an apocalyptic vision. Bullet Man walks us right up to that very same door of annihilation...and then says 'no' and resolutely closes the door. That's not a place Tsukamoto had reached before Nightmare Detective 2. 

Over the body of his work Shinya Tsukamoto has crafted tales of personal metamorphosis. Through his filmic explorations, it is Tsukamoto himself who has transformed.