Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on October 2013

In addition to being one half of the highly successful comedic TV duo Downtown, Hitoshi Matsumoto is a film director with inventive comedic features like Saya Zamurai (“Scabbard Samurai,” 2011) and Dai Nipponjin (“Big Man Japan,” 2007) under his belt. Those films were entertaining in a somewhat conventional sense but R100, a spasm of flying insanity, reminds me a bit of Sion Sono’s necrophilic/gore/serial killer charmer Tsumetai Nettaigyo (“Cold Fish,” 2010). Admittedly, that film was brutal and stomach turning while this is merely annoying and mildly nauseating. Matsumoto’s romp centers on Katayama (Nao Omori), a department store salesman and single parent who enjoys masochism. The story hurls from realism to surrealism to absurdity in steady progression. The first 40 minutes are pretty irritating because they break every rule of S&M play (yes, there are rules) while suggesting we should care about Katayama, his young son, sweet father-in-law and comatose wife. Matsumoto foreshadows the craziness to come by using bleak near-monochrome and color intermittently, sending energy tremors through the characters’ worlds, showing “the director” watching a screening, and even cutting to film execs/censors studying rushes and trying to make sense of the work. By the three-quarter mark, it’s a full on good vs. evil spy caper a lá Austin Powers. We get government agents, people eaten whole, nasty projectile foods and wounds oozing from the head. In turns tedious, surprising, self-congratulatory, funny and simply stupid, the work is either brilliant or unwatchable depending on your perspective. (98 min, with English subtitles)