The Colony, Kill Command and Shinjuku Triad Society
This has been a bizarre week for movie watching. As you probably are aware, movie theatres have been shut down across much of the globe and scores of people are stuck indoors right now to wait out what has caused this. This is the first week I’ve been home in an exceptionally long time and while I plan on watching more, shall we say, interesting/important/higher-profile films, I’ve been on kind of a binge of random films. So while I get myself together I’d love to talk about three of these near unknown films I’ve seen this week in preparation of me writing about something people would actually be interested in. It’s not like I have anything else to do right now.
The Colony!
Let’s start off with the first movies of these three that I watched this week, the post-apocalyptic thriller The Colony! Starring Laurence Fishburne, Bill Paxton, and probably some other people, The Colony is set in a futuristic world where horrific climate change has forced the entire population into underground bunkers, where dwindling supplies, illness, and eternal winter have turned all civilization into a ticking time bomb. The film follows a team of survivors, led by Fishburne, from Colony 7, who leave the safety of their compound to investigate a distress beacon from the nearby Colony 5. While this team discovers a new threat at Colony 5, a few disgruntled people at Colony 7 decide this is the perfect chance for a change in management.
Damn, Would You Look At That Cast…
While The Colony isn’t the best movie, and might not even be the best of these three, it deserves a lot of credit solely for its cast. I don’t know how much it costs to get Laurence Fishburne these days, but whatever they spent was well worth it. Fishburne’s charisma alone carries his scenes, as he somehow finds a way to make his workman-like dialogue sound convincing. Paxton is good too, but without Fishburne, this movie would not work even slightly. The rest of the cast is fine, they’re usually only as good as their dialogue, but there are some moments of humanity where the cast manages to transcend their material.
It Looks Pretty Good All Things Considered
For me, the bright spot of the movie is its set design, the biggest problem with so many apocalyptic movies is that they look cheap or fake and The Colony takes great pains to avoid that. Design-wise the bunkers look exactly how they’re supposed to, and the vast swathes of frozen Canadian city are always believable. Sure, sometimes the question of, “If it never stops snowing then why isn’t everything buried in snow?” is there, but I mostly give that a pass because I’d rather see partially snow-covered things than just big mounds of snow everywhere. There are also some good gore effects in the movie that I was not expecting to be here but was pleasantly surprised to see. That gore is kind of a problem though because once The Colony starts getting bloody, everything rapidly goes downhill.
Unfortunately, The Colony Does Not Stick The Landing.
I was pretty into the first two acts of this movie, getting to Colony 5 is good and investigating while there is also fun, but the third act is a massive dive in quality. Internal logic is abandoned and plot points start happening solely because they have to happen, whether them happening makes sense or not. It’s a disheartening turn, I was so ready to declare this movie an underseen gem, but the frustration of the final act fizzles out any good time that this was all building to. The Colony isn’t an aggressively bad movie or an offensive one, but it falls short of the potential it had. If you’re a huge Laurence Fishburne fan then this may be worth watching for his scenes, but even then I’d recommend turning the movie off after the climactic bridge sequence. If you pretend that is where the movie ends, then it is a lot better. I bought this movie from a dollar store months ago, but if you want to see it you could find it on TubiTV, Amazon, and Hulu, I believe. Could have been worse, fine as a distraction.
Kill Command!
The next film worth talking about…that I also got from a dollar store, is Kill Command! Set in the near future, a group of Marines, who have had their numbers dwindle rapidly due to replacement by drones, are sent to an island training base. With a representative of a government-backed tech corporation to oversee them, the Marines make quick work of their training exercises only to realize that something far more sinister is going on when the training drones turn on them. In a desperate fight for their lives, the Marines don’t know who to trust as the seemingly unstoppable robot soldiers get stronger and smarter by the minute.
A Slightly Rocky Start
Kill Command is the opposite of The Colony in a lot of ways, the most obvious being the casting choices. There isn’t a big name in Kill Command to latch onto and generally, I’d say the acting in The Colony is significantly better, but that may only be because of some veteran talent they have there. In Kill Command the acting is mostly okay for everyone, I can’t think of anyone who gave a particularly good or bad performance, which is probably for the best. Most of the lines in the first act were all pretty standard set dressing. The representative has biotech in her and programs robots, the scrappy Marines see this is as the tech that’s going to put them all out of a job, yadda yadda yadda you’ve probably seen this before. I don’t blame the actors for not being able to make this stuff exciting.
But Turns Out To Be A Quality Action-Thriller!
I was getting ready to write this movie off but surprisingly, once the first act is finished and the killer robot reveals itself (not a spoiler) everything gets significantly better. Once the horror plot actually starts and we get some tension going, everything about the movie ramps up, the dialogue feels more real, the characters become more distinct, an atmosphere of dread builds around this unfeeling enemy that they can all sense breathing down their necks. Kill Command becomes a pretty decent action-thriller and even though I don’t have a ton to say about it, I did genuinely enjoy it once it got going and fans of the sci-fi and horror genres probably would as well.
Shinjuku Triad Society!
The last film on this list is doubtlessly the most strange, but what else would you expect from cult filmmaking icon Takashi Miike? Shinjuku Triad Society is the first film in Miike’s Black Society trilogy focusing on Chinese and Japanese criminal organizations, racial tensions between the Chinese/Japanese, and absolute over the top absurdity. Normally I’m not super into crime dramas, but this one is directed by one of my favorite directors and is featured on the great horror streaming service Shudder, so I thought I’d give it a shot. I’m glad I did because even though this isn’t the type of film I’d typically watch, Miike’s distinct directing style made it an entertaining and memorable experience.
Okay, There Is A Lot Going On.
Shinjuku Triad Society follows the tried and true formula for Japanese crime movies by being about 100 simultaneous plotlines, but I’ll try to focus on the most important ones here. There’s a Chinese crime family that does horrible crimes like trafficking in children’s organs, drug dealing, and cop murdering. Also, they may or may not all be prostitutes. There’s a Japanese crime family that operates an underground fighting ring and has a tenuous peace with the Chinese group. But the main story is about a family of both Chinese and Japanese heritage, whose two brothers try to forge their own paths, one by being a cop on the edge, and the other by being a lawyer who’s in cahoots with the local crime bosses. The main thrust of this is that the cop, Kiriya, is doing everything in his power, both legal and extralegal, to stop his younger brother from getting mixed up with the wrong people, but he must also do this while investigating the disgusting crimes of Taiwanese crime boss Wang.
More Than What You Might Expect.
On its face, this all seems pretty standard. The cop who must bring his brother back to the right side of the law while also investigating a crime boss who trafficks in human organs isn’t the most out there or unbelievable premise, but this all becomes complicated by the fact it is a Takashi Miike movie. If you are unfamiliar with Miike, I will describe a few of his stylistic quirks: he is obsessed with gore and graphic violence, frequently features sexuality, particularly deviant sexuality, and usually finds some way to combine sex and violence, and he tends to approach characters, plots, and other standard conventions from an unusual angle. His style is present from Scene 1 where a naked man on a bed pontificates about how love is both sweet and sickening…and then in the next scene that same man sells his body right before bloodily killing a cop. Very Miike.
The Glorious Excesses of Miike.
The keyword for this movie is ‘excessive’. Everything is larger than life, from the big emotions on display to the over the top violence and gore to the intense and frequent bouts of wholesome (and sometimes very unwholesome) sex. For me, this is what makes Shinjuku Triad Society interesting. I have little interest in crime-dramas, but I always like being surprised by movies and I never had any idea what the next scene would hold. Would it be a standard police scene where the chief warns the cop on the edge to watch himself because he’s broken the rules one too many times, a scene where a crime boss flashes a group of other crime bosses just for yucks, or a scene where our hero cop brutally beats a woman? Who knows!?!
Great For Fans Of Extreme Cinema, Maybe Too Much For Others
This excessive nature is why I enjoyed the movie, but it would definitely turn many other viewers off, particularly with its interplay of sex, violence, and violent sex. If you are a fan of Takashi Miike’s other works like Audition, Ichi The Killer, or Gozu, or even if you’re a fan of extreme cinema in general, I would certainly recommend Shinjuku Triad Society as something to try. If you don’t fall into one of those categories then I’d say give it a pass, this isn’t a movie that I think would appeal to more traditional crime drama fans. You could rent this movie from Amazon Prime, or you could watch it for free at Shudder, which is offering a free month of their service to everyone because everyone is home right now. Just use the code SHUTIN.
Thank you for joining me as I talk about these randomly picked films, I’ll be back soon to talk about some movies that are a little more timely. Thank you and stay safe.
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