Fantastic Fest 2011

Following a six year foray into seriousness following his international cult hit FUNKY FOREST: THE FIRST CONTACT director Katsuhito Ishii is back where he belongs with SMUGGLER: Bringing the crazy to the masses.

Based on the popular manga by Shohei Manabe SMUGGLER tells the story of Kinuta, a failed actor forced to do odd jobs for the underworld to pay off a debt to a fashion conscious loan shark. What sort of jobs? Transportation, mostly. Late night transportation and disposal of dead bodies. It’s mindless work for the most part, but dangerous not only because it puts them in the path of the police but also of those who made the bodies dead in the first place.

Cue the arrival of uber-killer Vertebrae, brought to magnetic life by Japanese mega star Masanobu Ando (SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO, BATTLE ROYALE). The stone cold killer moves faster than the eye can follow, felling his targets effortlessly with his whirling nunchuks. When Vertebrae and Kinuta cross paths it cannot possibly end well.

Jam packed with colorful characters and stylish ultra-violence SMUGGLER gets Ishii back to doing what he does best: Capturing chaos in the most entertaining way possible. Ishii is the patron saint of the brash and bold, a director as comfortable at the helm of anime projects – he is responsible for the animated sequences in Quentin Tarantino’s KILL BILL – as he is with live action, and a director who loves to employ the exaggerated physics of animation in his live action work. With SMUGGLER Ishii sets himself one simple goal, to entertain, and he succeeds in grand style. (Todd Brown)

Japanese films at Fantastic Fest 2011 are presented by WELL GO USA ENTERTAINMENT