Dead End Run

SKU ED115 Weight 0.25 lbs Discs 1 Episodes 59 min Subtitles English Languages Japanese//Cult filmmaker Sogo Ishii's follow-up to his spectacular "Electric Dragon 80,000 V" consists of three short films. Continuing on the road he had taken, Ishii throws every trick in the book at us; rapid cuts, bouncing cameras, fast close-ups, wacky angles, vibrating zooms, and quick dissolves turn out a triumphant display of knockout visuals. All three stories deal with a "running man" who ends up in a dead-end alley. In the first part, a man is pursued by a woman who turns out to be "more than human." Part two stars Masatoshi Nagase ("Electric Dragon 80,000 V," "Party 7") as the man who is driven into the dead-end alley by a hitman. In part three, Tadanobu Asano (also from "Electric Dragon 80,000 V," "Party 7") is chased by the police, and ends up on a rooftop where he kidnaps a woman who was there to commit suicide. As usual, Ishii's technique combines breathless action scenes with the hard-edged feel of the experimental film.