Friday, 4 July 2008

Wicked City



Occult civil service! Connery-alike pick-up dick Taki and his magic, scenery deforming, magnum are teamed up with renegade demon cop Makie to accompany a lecherous old goblin to the signing of a détente between the human world and a hypersexual demon realm. The frustrated human man / demon woman collaboration, literal honey-traps, and the film's shadowy terror cells lend Wicked City a whiff of 60s espionage - a Cold War unease not unlike the franchise that was churned out of Ian Fleming's potboilers. The violent sexual subtext is elevated to text here though; the demon's predatory appraisal not just limited to (seemingly) helpless women. Wicked City is Yoshiaki Kawajiri's follow up to the lethal Formula 1 short The Running Man (part of the Neo Tokyo anthology), and is likewise drenched with freezing blues, stinging pinks and bubbling, psychic, superorganisms. 

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