From director Gakuryu Ishii (formerly Sogo Ishii of Panic High School and Crazy Thunder Road fame) comes Punk Samurai (Slash Down), an adaptation of the allegedly unfilmable novel of the same name from author Ko Machida. Junoshin Kake (Go Ayano) is a wandering ronin who mistakenly murders an innocent man he comes across on his travels. In an effort to get off with the crime he concocts a story about the man being a member of the Bellyshaker Party, a vicious cult which has been a blight on the clan of Lord Kuroae (Masahiro Higashide). Teaming up with a spy (Kiyohiko Shibukawa), a psychic moron (Ryuya Wakaba) and a nervous negotiator (Shota Sometani), Kake plans to use this as a chance to rise up the clan ranks. However, nothing is ever as simple as it sounds.

A keyword you may have picked up from that little introduction is ‘unfilmable.’ Now I’ve not read the novel, I don’t think an English translation currently exists in any official capacity although I am sure there are fan translations floating around somewhere. Had I read Machida’s novel I may have been able to follow Punk Samurai’s narrative more confidently. As it currently stands, this film feels impenetrable. This is a dense film, in the sense that a lot of stuff happens with very little room for you to process any plot or character developments. While one could very easily argue for this creating the anarchic and punky stylings that Ishii has been known for, however you can just as easily say that two hour and ten minute run time does these stylings no favours. There are points where the story becomes needless complex to follow, especially during the second half where characters begin to split off and do their own things; such as an entire B-plot about a monkey domestication school. An overwhelming amount of narration doesn’t help either, although I’m sure this is the closest you’ll get to an accessible audiobook version of the novel given the sheer amount of disembodied voices just described the scene.

This inaccessibility makes the presentation all the more disappointing, because this film’s aesthetic presentation and overall direction from Ishii is fantastic. There’s a great sense of exaggeration to everything, from the overly bright colours to the interesting twists on traditional Japanese dress and to the elaborate Bollywood-styled Bellyshakers’ dance that comes around the films mid-way point. It feels as close as you can get to an anime like Gintama being brought to life, with the exception of the preexisting Gintama adaptation which arrived a year before Punk Samurai. A lot of the comedy lands too, such as the puppet sequences that punctuate the juvenile humour of the Bellyshakers’ beliefs perfectly or an elaborate fight sequence which results in two characters sniffing each other’s nether regions to discover they were old friends. The use of licenced music works surprisingly well too, especially the couple of times that the instrumental to The Animals’ House of the Rising Sun is used to surprisingly melancholic effect.

 Punk Samurai’s cast is the real highlight of the film, especially the central performance from Go Ayano as Kake. Ayano is manic yet oddly suave at points, really capturing the energy of a teenager trying their best to just be as cool as possible. Sometimes he comes across as lovingly lame, and others effortlessly cool. I think he’s a good contrast to the completely deranged performance of Tadanobu Asano as Bellyshakers’ leader Hanro Chayama, an actor who brings every ounce of energy he has to just playing this complete maniac who has all these ridiculous tattoos and screams almost every line he has.

As for special features on this new Third Window blu-ray release we get the usual suspects. An extensive hour long making of documentary that I think does a really good job at selling how fun this set must have been to work on. We also get a short interview with Go Ayano and a slightly longer cast and crew greeting from the film’s premier. Also, there’s the film’s trailer on the disc as well.

My final presiding thought here is thus: hire a more stringent editor. Had this film been just twenty minutes shorter I think the punk energy would never have run out. But as is, with a stretched out runtime, Punk Samurai often gets lost in its attempts to have a complex Tarantinoesque plot when it really should be embracing its comedic strengths and energetic selection of performances. A cult classic that stumbles at every other hurdle.