From October of last year here’s a Blu Ray reissue of Pornostar- the first feature film from Osaka born Toshiaki Toyoda, a Japanese filmmaker who makes emotionally impactful and visually clever cinema, which utilizes music in an effective/ interesting manner. Originally released in the late 90's Pornostar, is a slow-burn and nihilistic crime drama with some subtly arty visual touches and use of churning electric guitar music-it sees a gangly and quiet youth going on a lumbering-yet-brutal killing spree in Tokyo gangland.

Pornostar (aka Poruno sutâ, Tokyo Rampage) appeared in the year 1998. Toshiaki Toyoda both wrote and directed this feature-length debut, and while there are some issues, it certainly showed great promise- with some memorable/ creative use of both visuals and music.

The film opens with the tall and gangly Arano (Chihara Kyōdai) travelling subway train into the city. He is wearing a green parka jacket, has a scruffy bob like haircut, wears jeans and baseball boots- and from the off he rather comes off like an oriental Liam Gallagher. He steps off the train, and into the city- and the Gallagher like tropes fully kick in, as he walks through the crowds liberally knocking into others in a couldn’t care less manner. In time he knocks into Kamijo (Onimaru)- who is suited and booted in blue, with well-kept shoulder-length hair- he’s a small-time gangster, who has a passing connection with the yakuza. When Arano knocks into him, he’s telling off a streetwalker who works for him. The pair face-off, though Kamijo is dragged away by his henchmen- but during this, he drops his knife.

Next, we see Arano once again lumbering on and knocking into folk in crowded streets- he approaches a ticket seller mumbling the first of his few lines ‘Yakuza is not needed’- he’s led down back streets following the ticket seller and older smoking ‘n’ spitting man who admits to being a Yakuza- next we see said man stumbling into a room stabbed, and collapsing in the floor flooding it with blood. In the room is Kamijo and his men- they are visiting an older gangster (Akaji Maro, getting instructions for taking out a rival crime boss. Initially, Kamijo and his men beat up,  putting the awkward & limply bedraggled Arano in the boot of their car, to dump him later- though fairly soon he decides to release him, bringing him into his fold.
 
Kyōdai is wonderfully understated and unemotional as total focused-yet-scruffy psycho- at times one gets western nameless stranger comes into town vibes, at others his awkward blank slate hints at either a very disturbed mind or some form of autism. The rest of the cast are ok  to quite good, though the characters are largely playing into Yakuza gangster tropes. 
 
The film runs at the one hour and thirty-eight-minute mark- and at times the pacing/ flow of the whole thing is rather drawn out. I’m all for slower arty takes on crime/ action tropes, but here the drags in pace often feel highly awkward and badly placed. This issue is the main/ key problem with the film, and otherwise, this is a promising enough debut.
 
So, the positives here are of course Kyōdai and his performance, some memorable/ at times quite subtle odd set-ups/ visuals- we have a nude gangster and hookers in a hot tab surrounded by many large tomatoes, Kyōdai tall and awkward figure bashing into large crowds of smaller oriental folk, and an impressive ice then rain shower. On the action/ bloody side of things, we get a lot of slashing, ripping and stabbing attacks- and at one point this is taking to a manic, though almost darkly comic level- as Kyōdai stabs a man with five or six knives over, over and over again in the chest. Another plus is the use of defiantly churning electric guitar music, which is used to great effect as Kyōdai lumbers on. So, I’d say if you either like artier based/ paced crime films or enjoy Toyoda other work you’ll enjoy Pornostar.
 
Moving onto this Blu Ray release- and we get two extras, a commentary track from the always informative and entertaining Japanese film expert Tom Mes, and an interview with the director. Both of these extras appeared when the film first got reissued by Third Widow films as part of the Toshiaki Toyoda: The Early Years, which the company put out in 2016- this was Ltd to just 2000’s copies and is now long out of print.
The commentary track is another great one from Mes- he starts off by discussing how Pornostar was part of a spate of disillusioned and violent youth films that appeared in the late 1990s in Japan.  He discusses the directors early work- and how the films after this evolved Toyoda style. He talks about the film’s main locations around the Shibuya-ku district of Toyko, giving both a great insight into both the area's history and it's geography. He comments on certain scenes, moving on to give most interesting actors bios/ facts- for example, lead, Kyōdai originally came from a comedy background, and Onimaru who plays the gangster that befriends Kyōdai was original the leader of a notorious biker gang. Later on, he discusses youth gang culture around the late 1990s in Japan, discusses the park location where the skateboard gang we meet later in the film, character motivation, and more. The other extra aside from the trailer is a fourteen-minute onscreen interview with Toshiaki Toyoda- and this is more of a general early work focused, than purely on the film to hand.
  

It’s certainly great to have Pornostar back in print once more. And if you have interest in Toyoda's work in general, may I strongly advised pick up the second boxset of Toyoda work Third Widow Films put out late last year Toshiaki Toyoda: 2005-2021. Drop by here  to find out more/ buy direct