Hey folks, Harry here - Sounds like a sick flick worthy of a Miike cameo and a debut at Rotterdam! Both good signs on the cult-o-meter! Let's get to Mr Tough Guy's description!

Hey Harry,

An other update from Rotterdam, The main event for me today was Rinjin 13-go (The Neighbor No. 13). The neighbor No. 13 is another movie adaptation of a popular manga, about a guy, Juzo who as a kid is the target of a bully, Akai. Ten years later the two meet again when they both move into the same apartment building and Juzo starts working at the same construction company as akai. After ten years akai hasn’t changed much and is still a bully, except this time juzo has a Dr Jekyl/Mr Hyde type alter ego who strikes back. The lead role of Juzo is played by two different actors Oguri Shun plays the mild mannered Juzo while Kabuki actor Nakamura plays his violent alter ego.

Director Inoue Yasuo was present at this screening which also happened to be the World premiere of the movie, apparently the movie had been offered to several other festivals in America and around the world, but was not excepted because it was to violent, but violence isn’t something that stops the programmers in Rotterdam or so we are told by one of the festival guys. Inoue Yasuo introduced the movie by saying that though he doesn’t speak much English he did understand the word violence and was happy to see the audience burst out in applause when it was mentioned that the movie was going to be violent, also he said to look out for a cameo by miike Takashi who plays one of the victims, he said that miike usually kills of many people in his movie, so this time he wanted to kill him in his movie.

After such a great introduction I had high hopes for the movie, and on paper it sounded great, but unfortunately the movie was a bit disappointing, being used to Miike movies The neighbor No. 13 didn’t seem very violent to me, The movie was in my opinion very slow, and throughout the movie I was waiting for violence to happen, though the movie never really delivered. There were a couple of cool scenes that were sort of violent but nothing to write home about. Ultimately the slow pace and my high expectations led me to be a bit disappointed, In my opinion you’d be better of seeing a clockworks orange or just about anything from miike’s library if you really want to see a violent movie. After the movie Inoue Yasoue came back for a Q&A, and answered some questions. I can’t really remember the questions, and I couldn’t hear some of them anyway but here are some of the thoughts from the director. He felt that the violence in this movie was different then the violence in say a miike movie, as in his movie there’s not a lot of blood and gore though he felt that it’s the type of violence that you remember and lingers.

The casting of two different actors was planned from the beginning, in the manga you see juzo in one panel and his violent alter ego in the next panel, he felt that casting two different actors for the role was better then showing a gradual change from one persona into the other.

There are a lot of shot’s of toilets and turds, cause he finds them interesting and he finds people who can produce large turds scary.

Mr Tough Guy