Survive Style 5+ Review

Movie: Survive Style 5+
By: Maniac E
Date: January 7, 2013

What's your function in life?

Comedy, violence, sadness, beauty and perversion abound as five interweaving storylines collide in this vibrant movie from the land of extreme cinema. I stumbled across this some years ago at my cousins place when we where looking for a movie to watch, and it blew both of our minds. Survive Style 5+ isn't your ordinary movie and fits in all most every category of film making. Be amazed.

While the movie is 5 mini stories in one I will try and make a synopsis for this movie, which isn't easy without spoilers but here goes: A salary man wins tickets to the latest stage sensation: hypnosis show VIVA FRIENDS! In the middle of the act an assassin (Vinny Jones) shows up and sticks a pin through the hypnotist's skull just when the salary man has been turned into a bird. A gang of housebreakers roams the suburbs, dealing with their budding lust for one another. A man kills and buries his wife, only to have her claw her way out of her grave and go after him with missile arms and fire breath, over and over again. An advertising executive goes off the deep end and begins bringing her clients some of the funniest and most vulgar commercials ever seen on TV.

The way the five different situations are somehow linked or cross paths with each other is silly but believable, in the context of the weirdness of this movie, and the cast is excellent, exceeding my expectations by a mile. If the plot doesn't interest, the characters and their actors/actresses most definitely will. It is an anime with real actors and real setting, it is a film with cartoon characters and cardboard settings. It is a Kaleidescope, where you watch people and places rather than shifting shapes. Each thread has a sense of the absurd to it, with real people placed into increasingly wacky situations.

If the title weren't indication enough, it's as bizarre as you probably think it is, but hot damn is it one hell of a good time. In movies with mini plots it really needs to link good to each other, otherwise the movie would missed its purpose in my opinion. But strangely enough the fact that the plots just come across each other works brilliantly! The movie just looks excellent bright vibrant colors everywhere, gorgeous decors, and complete chaos for the viewer. There are crazy Japanese commercials which will make you laugh, A reanimated corpse that shoots its fists like mech-style missiles, a British hitman linking every part of the stories to each other, and a illusionist who loves rabbits!.

But crazy visuals and nonsense storylines are nothing without a talented cast. Thankfully Survive Style 5+ has more than its fair share. Though much of the comedy may be brash and in your face, every performance is subtly nuanced. Little facial tics, as in the case of Kyoko Koizumi and Shihori Kanjiya, further enhance the many moments of hilarity. Asano is near mute for the majority of the film, and provides a lot of laughs through awkward silences and physical posturing. Kishibe's bird is alternately adorable and melancholic. You'd think the guy spent half of his life as a bird-watcher. Sonny Chiba's performance as an executive whose wife constantly calls for lightbulb-changing advice during board meetings is also quite amusing. Vinnie, well, Vinne's just Vinne.

Survive Style 5+ is just an great movie that you need to experience yourself to believe it.Great perfomances from the whole cast and manic chaos that plays out on screen. it's an ecstasy of oil-drenched colors and positively swank melodies, which is likely to dilate your pupils and retune your eardrums to a whole new frequency. It is over the top, it is eye candy, it is one big laugh, and to me it is one of the best J-cinema movies out there! "What's your function in life?".