Tokyo Playboy Club   TG-2012 

There are rundown nightclubs where the excitement is gone, but the Playboy Club in Tokyo has long since passed that phase. It’s the ideal backdrop for shady deals, pathetic eroticism and loutish violence. The filmmaker captures the decline with a bizarre sense of humour.

In 2010, Okuda Yosuke made a name for himself with his low-budget gangster comedy Hot as Hell: The Deadbeat March, the last part of his Hot as Hell trilogy. This year, he returns with a wry crime story about the fringes of Japanese society.
Every client - and there aren’t many - can see that the Tokyo Playboy Club has seen its best days. After a fight at work, Katsutoshi flees to this club, owned by his good friend Seikichi. It’s not long before hot-headed Katsutoshi also makes life impossible for himself here by beating a local gangster to a pulp. Seikichi now fears - rightly so - for his own skin. In the meantime, one of his barmen gets into trouble, so the man’s girlfriend Eriko feels forced to take a job as a hostess. As a result she also becomes involved in the rapidly escalating conflict between the owner, his loose-fisted friend and the furious gangsters.
This gangster film with unusual accordion music focuses on people who primarily live by instinct. And this results in extremely bloody, reckless scenes. Director Okuda also offers a dash of absurd Tarantino - minus the glamour - this dry adventure shows a shabby side of Japan we usually don’t get to see.

Programmer Note by Gertjan Zuilhof:

The opening scene is not in the Playboy Club where most of the rest of the film is set. The film starts in a garage where one of the protagonists is introduced. It is Katsutoshi (played by Omori Nao) who has a temporary job in the workshop and obviously is a sly outsider among the pretty stupid mechanics. Then it all starts. A hysterical student walks into the yard and complains about the noise. The mechanics don’t take the student seriously at first, tease him a little and advise him to wear earplugs. Then the student turns round, grabs an enormous sledgehammer and attacks them with it. The mechanics are terrified and in panic and promise absolute silence. The student, foaming at the mouth, sees that Katsutoshi is calmly carrying on with his work and that he is tightening the bolts on an engine with perfect composure. The student, dragging the hammer behind him, heads for Katsutoshi. The latter doesn’t bat an eyelid, but gazes stoically ahead. The student pulls him up by his collar. Still perfectly composed, Katsutoshi takes a wrench from his overall and kills the student with one short accurate blow. Like the drummer of a jazz combo who routinely beats slightly out of time. Timing. The young filmmaker Okuda Yosuke knows better than any. It’s all about timing.
The opening immediately makes two things clear. You shouldn’t mess with Katsutoshi and the film is bizarrely funny.