Please don't spend money on this.

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

The cinematography that inspired Quentin Tarantino , Johnnie To , and Takeshi Kitano ... Violent, cool, jazzy, colorful, gangster, clubs, shootouts, guns with codes ..Tetsu lives a charmed life by the side of his boss Mr. Kurata. But when his boss disbands the group rival Otsuka wants to take over . When Tetsu declines his offer to join his gang Otsuka sets out a personal path to destroy Tetsu and Kurata. He takes the mortgage of Kurata building by force. When people start dying and gangs begin forming alliances, Tetsu decides to get out of dodge and become a drifter .Otsuka , obsessed with Tetsu's demise, sends Viper (equally obsessed with Tetsu) to take him out. Along Tetsu's journey he participates in a shootout in the snowy mountains, befriends a drifter from Otsuka gang Shooting Star, and gets into a bar fight in South Japan.Otsuka strongarms Kurata into rubbing out Tetsu. Tetsu gets word his boss betrayed him and sets off back to Toyko. He returns to find Otsuka in his club beating his girl, his former boss by his side. Thee final shootout ensues

If you are fed up by ordinary manufactured campiness, but still have normal levels of humor.. Which is to say if you find Austin Powers not only boring but trivial, you might check this out. It is high camp. It is ridiculous in ways that in other action films we readily accept: think the recent James Bonds. There is a joke product placement — for hair driers — that is really funny.We have the ordinary sort of thing that qualifies: cheesy songs, goofy hero, posed action, jingly hipness. But we have a level of cheesiness that goes beyond the Tarrantino level, beyond the usual joke. The cinematography is one big joke, one that still works today because the big movies still use Vietnam era visual devices.We have jokes on Bertralucci, Welles, Kurosawa. Leone of course. We have a couple stagings from Bergman even. It is not worth the effort to single out any Frenchman it seems, treating them with the contempt of wholesale dismissal. Under ordinary circumstances, I would not recommend this because the usual level of the joke gets pretty tiring after 20-30 minutes. But the cinematic jokes and references keep coming, as though there were a catalogue (like we are told the Coen brothers keep). The blatant vacancy of the visuals is pretty damning.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

If you want brilliant classic cinema, by all means go elsewhere. But if you've been looking for the Japanese equivalent to a blacksploitation flick, you've got it here. Cheesy acting, antiquated and predictable storytelling, AND catchy theme song all rolled into one. (Have to give credit where credit is due, that theme song is great). Generally I'm a fan of film cross-pollination. After all, where would Akira Kurasawa be without the old classic Westerns, and likewise, where would George Lucas be without Akira Kurasawa? But Tokyo Drifter just overdid it. It also had that 'Speed Racer' feeling to it, like you where watching the same thing over and over again. Still, much like Shaft, it's not art, but it's still quite enjoyable.

Tokyo Drifter (1966) ** 1/2 (out of 4) All style and no substance certainly rings true for this Japanese gangster film from director Seijun Suzuki. I'm not 100% certain on the plot but a gangster gives up the lifestyle after his boss gets out of the racket but soon the two find themselves under attack by a rival gang. With more and more pressure being added, the former gangster must turn drifter to keep the heat off of his beloved boss. I'm really not sure if that's the exact story to this thing because it seemed all over the place. Not to mention the fact that it was rather clear that the director was more interested in getting all the style on film and this style is basically the main reason to see this film. The beautiful colors certainly leap off the screen as does the terrific cinematography but the lack of story really left me cold. I also didn't care too much for the lead, which was another negative.