WHY DON'T YOU PLAY IN HELL?

The annoying toothpaste jingle that a number of the characters end up singing throughout WHY DON’T YOU PLAY IN HELL? is as good as an example as any of this film's clever balance of uncontrolled lunacy and multiple layered plots that all run into each other by the middle of the story.

Director Sion Sono’s masterpiece COLD FISH ratcheted up the emotional peaks and moments of titillation with such relentlessness one couldn’t breathe.  Here the gore is much more unreal and also much less than I expected going in.  The film has basically no nudity or sex but that’s not necessary as this is a filmmaker’s fantasy – An action story within a movie within an action story.

The story of a team of amateur filmmakers colliding with two warring yakuza gangs as well as the actress daughter of one of the Yakuza heads and the young man who idolizes her sloppily spills out full of shameless overacting by the cast (which includes many familiar faces for those who are fans of Japanese cinema) and gleeful craziness.

The end result is a pretty good film that perhaps errs a bit too much on the side of gentility and humor despite the death and gore but in the end I have to salute Sono for skillfully using the filmmaker as the deux ex machine – Best use of a plot device in a film I saw in 2014.