Movie Review: Why Don’t You Play In Hell? (2014)

Why Don’t You Play In Hell? is a very strange film. A painstaking (and not in a good way) lead up to what can only be described as one of the craziest, gloriously bloody last twenty minutes of any film ever. Unfortunately, to get those last twenty minutes, you have endure the first 100.

The story can be broken down into a simple sentence: A renegade film crew becomes embroiled with a Yakuza clan feud. Which really is just one of the various strands which comes together, either seamlessly or as is the case by projectile vomiting. Basically, the film starts ten years prior when a group of guerrilla cinema fiends that call themselves the “F**k Bombers” end up filming a real gang fight, find themselves the next ‘Bruce Lee’ in the form of Sasaki, and then end up filming a bloodied survivor of a rival gang hit. Add in a Yakuza boss whose daughter has gone AWOL from her first starring role in a film, many random chance meetings, and a whole bunch of other stuff that, if described in detail, would take up around twenty pages.

Why Don’t You Play In Hell? has plenty of Manga-style images like indoor lakes of blood, all of which are all very striking, but the problem is that they aren’t always coherent. Writer and director Shion Sono throws everything he can into the mixing pot, with some of what comes out is amazing and some is just frustrating and fruitless. Seemingly either having a go at Tarantino films or simply claiming the martial arts film back from the imports, the film has many sequences that seem to mirror or riff on these films or scenes. Perhaps it’s a comment on films borrowing from one another, but it isn’t clear.

The humour, whilst black (or red), does fall flat most of the time, as it’s either exasperatedly yelled or it’s something you’ve seen in a thousand other wacky Japanese films. The humour works best (as does the film) in the last twenty carnage filled minutes. For a film that perhaps could’ve, or at least should’ve, had plenty of moments to satirize films and film making, it makes little effort to do so. Only the over the top ending could be construed as a comment on the stylised violence that is prevalent in most blockbuster films now, but even then it’s a murky message.

Why Don’t You Play Hell? certainly has its moments, but they are almost all bundled into the insane finale. Well worth a look if you are a Sono fan or a fan of crazy, nonsensical but still somehow entertaining films, otherwise you’re probably best to stay well away.