Review of Survive Style 5+

Introduction

A voiceover addresses the audience; a man who wants to kill his wife explains his feelings, what differentiates him from the average Joe. Then we see that man in the process of burying his wife in a secluded shallow grave. Her face twitches, he makes sure she is dead by repeatedly hitting her with the shovel, very sure. He arrives home, sits down to smoke a post homicidal cigarette, watches some anime, gets up to drink some milk, and finds his wife, uninjured, in a change of clothes, waiting for him at the dining table. So begins Survive Style 5+, a bizarre disjointed film that has a dark comic edge to it, with a discrete sense of the absurd.

We follow 5 stories, most prominent of which is the husband trying to find more and more novel ways of dispatching his wife, only to see her return in a more vengeful frame of mind. We see the businessman who decides to take his family on a night out to see a famous hypnotist, and gets hypnotised into believing he is a bird. Only before the effect can be reversed, the hypnotist is killed. There is the ad executive whose ideas for adverts only appeal to the most narrow of audiences, the trio of petty thieves who have interpersonal issues to work out, and the British hitman who is in town for a short while to make a killing. All these threads intertwine and cross, weaving a surreal tale.

Video

Survive Style 5+ gets a 1.85:1 anamorphic transfer, but like many Japanese films released in the UK, it suffers from a NTSC-PAL conversion. It`s a little soft, and pans are noticeably jerky. Other than that, it is clear and colourful. The film impresses with the design; costumes and sets are stylish and distinctive and boast excellent use of colour to enhance the dreamlike story. It`s an outstandingly designed film, let down by the standards conversion.

Audio

You run the full gamut of soundtrack options, with DD 2.0, DD 5.1 and DTS Japanese, with optional English subtitles. It should be noted that English dialogue that isn`t translated gets burnt in Japanese subtitles. The surround track makes excellent use of the soundstage. The dialogue is clear, and the film boasts interesting sound design, with a lot of atmosphere and making full use of the LFE. There is also an attractive choice of music, with one song contributing to one of the film`s funnier moments.

Features

Manga Entertainment present this disc with a brief selection of extras, with the film`s trailer, and a Manga Attacks trailer reel. This boasts a new 4-minute trailer featuring some of the more current anime titles, and is followed by the more familiar Art Of Anime trailer.

Of greater interest is the 29-minute long Making Of, which does just what you would think. There`s plenty of behind the scenes footage, as well as interviews with the cast as well as first time feature director Gen Sekiguchi.

Conclusion

Manga Entertainment aren`t exactly known for their live action releases, concentrating most of their efforts on anime. With Survive Style 5+ however, they have a potential cult hit on their hands. It`s stylish, from out of left field, and despite the fact that it wears its movie references and homage proudly on its sleeve, it still manages to create something unique and noteworthy. In execution, it`s very similar to Pulp Fiction in the way that the various stories intertwine, criss-cross, glance off each other or just shoot off in unexpected directions. Yet this is done with an eccentric sense of humour and technicolour outlandishness that really makes it like nothing I have seen before.

The two main threads revolve around the husband`s repeated attempts to bump off his wife, and the businessman who has a case of irreversible hypnosis. Each time the husband kills his wife, she returns in a more merciless frame of mind, treating him to a beating of Amazon proportions. It`s like nothing less than a live action cartoon, and utterly entertaining. The businessman who takes his family on a night out, ends up thinking he is a bird, and the family have to come to terms with that bizarre situation. One of the film`s funnier moments sees the four of them on the way to the show, headbanging in unison to the music that plays on the car`s stereo. It`s comical seeing this wholesome family singing along to some foul-mouthed punk lyrics. Vinnie Jones guests as a British hitman brought over to Japan to lend some professionalism to a hit. He has a habit of asking everyone what their function in life is, and it`s a trait that could get tiresome, were it not for his interpreter. As Vinnie goes off on some foul-mouthed threat, his interpreter translates, and as it turns out manages an impressive Vinnie Jones impersonation, albeit in Japanese. The ad exec provides some meaningless and usually unconnected comedy (although she is responsible for at least one key plot point), by coming up with another awful ad idea. As she dictates her latest brainwave onto tape, a screen comes up stating "The ad Yoko is imagining", and we get to see the latest masterpiece that is giving her the giggles. Perhaps the weakest of the stories is that of the thieves, but their tale doesn`t drag and there is some humour to be found in it.

Survive Style 5+ is fast paced and briskly edited, keeping the humour and action snappy, and the flow of surrealist absurdity constant. That is until the 90-minute mark, where the film appears to lose energy as it takes on a reflective air. It`s as if it is trying to make some sense out of the mayhem, give meaning to the events and assign an emotional depth to characters that have thus far appeared light and oddball. It`s an odd sort of philosophy that feels a tad misplaced, and would have lowered the film in my estimation, were it not for the brilliant ending. It was emotionally satisfying, gave the characters a sense of closure, and topped everything else in the film in terms of sheer surreal fantasy. Survive Style 5+ is different certainly, but it is also entertaining, and the disjointed narrative invites repeated viewing. It`s bizarre, it won`t be to everyone`s fancy, but it`s well worth a try if you`re tired of the same old, same old.