Two well-trod genres are combined in the Tokyo-set, English dialect noir SHE’S JUST A SHADOW.
Amidst a slick and bright-burning modern-day Tokyo, two vicious conflicts are played out.
Firstly , a gang war between leaders Red Hot (Kentez Asaka) and Blue Sky who dominate a respective side of town, occasionally venturing into each others’ to remind themselves of the fact. One of their group, Knockout (Marcus Johnson) has a side job as a photographer, but is plagued by a wheelchair bound homeless boy. In Red Hot’s circle is a brothel of prostitutes, led by a madam, Irene (Tao Okamoto) whose own family thought nothing of poisoning people at dinner and has a past history with Blue Sky.
Secondly, things are a little intense out there in light of the endeavours of a very perverted serial killer, known to fearful women as the ‘Train Track Ripper’, whose seeming sole purpose is to abduct women, tie them up to railway lines and then film their horrible demises, before sending the footage to newsrooms and social media.
Red Hot’s brother, Gaven (Kihiro) has a soft spot for one of the prostitutes in his circle and wants to get out of the business, having just commandeered a suitcase of cocaine from a pool room skirmish. However, as is the case in this type of world, things will not end up as romantic or happy as he would like them to be…
There was a time when John Woo would be the most extreme film-maker of Far Eastern cinema with the likes of THE KILLER and HARD-BOILED, but then the likes of Chan-Wook Park with OLDBOY and Takashi Miike with AUDITION and ICHI THE KILLER would take up the reins and have a stranglehold on how far anyone would be willing to go.
Writer-director Adam Sherman certainly has a sense of what Far Eastern extreme cinema can be and mixing up two types of this sub-genre of film-making does yield some dividends when it comes to the very brutal acts of violence which are dotted throughout.
Right from the get-go in the opening pool-hall sequence, bodies are beaten senseless and hit with many a pool ball as Red Hot and Gaven take what isn’t their’s. Coupled with the Train Track Ripper’s own perverted satisfactions, this is not for all tastes and squarely aimed at the fans of Miike and Park, who will get this straight away. However, it isn’t as tightly-scripted as it could be and the mix of genre styles does at times dilute the impact of the film.
Visually it is stylish enough, thanks to the slick Tokyo city scape getting a look-in throughout the film and showing us how contemporary the city is in a way cinematographer Jan De Bont did three decades before in Ridley Scott’s BLACK RAIN with Michael Douglas.
Perhaps a staggering of the bloodshed and violence might have given audiences a lot more jolts and shocks, in a less-is-more ideal. Some of the dialogue is a little spaced-out, but that may well be down to the drug-hazed mental state of the characters throughout the film.
Whilst it isn’t the most assured of this style of film-making, SHE’S JUST A SHADOW has a fair amount of excess in reserve.
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SHE’S JUST A SHADOW is available on DVD and VOD from October 22nd, 2019
