TOSHIAKI TOYODA: 9 SOULS (2004) New York Asian Film Festival 2025A raucous, comedic, violent adventue9 Souls, an eccentric action comedy thrill prison break tale, is one of the films on which Japanese director Toyiaki Toyada's reputaton is staked. It is part of the 2025 NYAFF series "In Focus" on his work. It shows nine fugitives, all of them convicted of murder or some other high crime, on flight from themselves in modern Japan. Bursting out of prison all at oncer, they commandeer a van from a strip club, planning to make it to a stash of counterfeit money a crazy inmate has revealed to them, and then find a home place to hang out. This does not turn out as planned, but there are many adventures.
9 Souls is essentially in two parts, the group one and the individual one. In the first the escapees are traveling together, and it seems crucial for them to stay that way. Every time they rush off to a new location they seem to leave someone running madly behind desperate not to be abandoned, and this becomes a "thing" typical of this film, its rather combination of comedy and intense action. In the second part the men go off on their own, and individualized adventures result. The stage is set for this by introducing each "soul" with a title card at the outset with crime and sentence: murderer, escape artist, legendary violent biker, dwarf porn king, drug pusher on US naval base, mad bomber, "general loose canon," "born delinquent," father killer."
The essence of the thing is that this is a buddy picture where the escapees work as a team, and the absurdity of that with men such as this, whose only point in common is that they were jailbirds and whose feuds with their own gangs are well known. Yet they do help each other, starting with their escape. There is panbache in the way this opebing scene is handled: with camera at ground level, we just suddenly see a big hole in the ground and the men climb out of it one by one.
From the get-go (nine prisoners escaping at once)
9 Souls is not in any way a realistic treatment of the prison escape theme. So if that is what you are looking for, you must look elsewhere. This is first of all an entertainment, one as full of energy and invention as you could want, but requiring a willing suspension of disbelief at all times. In crafting a crime escape film involving nine criminals, the filmmakers are looking for something joyous and collective, somewhat on the order of the American
Ocean's Eleven films but wilder and more criminal.
There are lots of laughs, but there are buckets of blood shed as well. It's not that there is no sense of danger, only that the rules are not the usual ones. Look for lots of onscreen action--not subtle character portrayal. A tour de force.
9 Souls (ナイン・ソウルズ, Nain Souruzu), 119 mins., opened in Japan Jul. 31, 2003 but premiered at Toronto Sept. 12; also Toronto, Pusan, Friberg, Philadelphia. Japan Cuts debut 2012. Screened for this review as part of the Jul. 11-17, 2025 Japan Cuts.
SCHEDULE:
Sunday July 20, 3:15pm
LOOK Cinemas W57
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