COLD FISH Blu-ray Review

Third Window Films:

Shamoto runs a small tropical fish shop. His second wife, Taeko, does not get along with his daughter, Mitsuko, and this worries him. One day Mitsuko is caught shoplifting at a grocery store. There they meet a friendly man named Murata, who helps to settle things between Mitsuko and the store manager. Since Murata also runs a tropical fish shop, Shamoto establishes a bond with him and they become friends; Mitsuko even begins working for Murata and living at his house. What Shamoto doesn't know, however, is that Murata hides many dark secrets behind his friendly face. He sells cheap fish to his customers for high prices with his artful lies. If anyone detects his fraud or refuses to go along with his money-making schemes, they're murdered and their bodies disposed of by Murata and his wife in grisly ways.

Shamoto is suddenly taken in by Murata's tactics, and by the time he realizes that Murata is insane, and a serial killer who has made over fifty people disappear, he is powerless to do anything about it. But now Mitsuko is a hostage at Murata's home, and Shamoto himself has become the killer's unwilling accomplice. Cruel murders gradually cripple his mind and finally the ordinary man is driven to the edge of the abyss.

Much has been written about Cold Fish on ScreenAnarchy, so I'll keep my personal thoughts on the film brief: Wow.

Many people will come to Cold Fish fresh from having seen Love Exposure, and those people are in for a very different experience, but not an unfamiliar one.  Sion Sono's films share stylistic and thematic touches, if not always similar stories.  Love Exposure was a grand four-hour excursion into the deepest regions of Sono's mind and obsessions.  That film was expansive and deliberate, it spent time contemplating the world, religion, the very idea of sin and redemption, and it sort even came to a conclusion.  Cold Fish is much more focused and streamlined. 

Cold Fish's story of a couple of men and some murders still deals with a lot of the same themes of family cohesion and extremism that Love Exposure does, but it doesn't do it at the expense of pacing.  Sono's later film focuses on two families and their very different quirks. One family's pastime is a bit bloodier than the other, but both are pretty fucked up. 

Two of our own reviewers took on Cold Fish and its apparent misogyny:

"Cold Fish" paints a very damning picture of humanity in general and is especially vitriolic in its depiction of women.
All women.
As in: there isn't a woman in the entire movie who is not actively seeking out abuse and enjoying it to a certain degree when it finally happens to her. This depiction already gets pretty obvious and ridiculous near the end but the cackling maniac in the very last shot clinches it: women are mad, needy bitches. Anyone trying to sell this narrative as based on a true story may need to be examined.

-Ard Vijn

Unfortunately, I can only witness so many bare-breasted bimbos getting punched in the face and/or bludgeoned before I dismiss a movie as suspiciously cruel and pointless. This is not to say that men don't get their fair share of played-for-laughs violence doled out to them in the flick, but they aren't say things like "let's make love now!" in the midst of it, either.

-Teresa Nieman

While I can't say that I agree with their views, I can see where they are coming from.  This may fall into similar territory with The Woman in that the viewer brings their own experiences to the film.  What ever you brought to the film will affect what you walk away with.  I'm inclined to think that Sono is more misanthrope than misogynist, and I think his oeuvre bears that out.

That grand discussion aside, Cold Fish is a visceral roller-coaster. The film is as charismatic as its lead character, Murata, and we are drawn in by his fast talking just as much as Shamoto is. Nothing in the film feels quite right.  Shamoto's strained relationship with his wife and daughter seems ready to burst at any moment.  Murata's relationship with his wife seems a bit too good at times, and we all know that anything that looks overly fantastic must have a dark side.  Around the halfway point, the film explodes in a cascade of murder, lies, mayhem, and intrigue.  Once we find out that Murata is a murderer and he pulls Shamoto into his web, it is only a matter of time before the other shoe drops, and holy hell, when it drops, it crushes everything in its path.

I think Todd said it better than I could in his review:

A picture that begins as a domestic family drama and slowly builds into a desperate fugue of violence and brutality, Cold Fish not only contains some of the most graphic imagery you will see on screen this year - including a sequence that I like to refer to as the year's longest chase scene covering the least amount of distance - but also the philosophical and character underpinnings to make the violence matter. This is a picture about the human capacity for evil, one that not only asks the questions but is unafraid to gaze unflinchingly at the answer.

While there is a case to be made that Cold Fish is over long and that a significant piece of its lengthy run time to be cut without damaging it in the slightest the counterpoint to this is that it builds to such a satisfying conclusion that the run time really doesn't matter.

I highly recommend Cold Fish for those with strong constitutions and a preference for the operatically insane.

The Disc:

Third Window Films has a stellar record on Blu-ray so far, and Cold Fish won't be the disc to break that streak.  The last two films I reviewed from them were Memories of Matsuko and Confessions, both of which are very stylized presentations.  It sound weird to say this, but Cold Fish is far more naturalistic in its visual style than those, and the video presentation is very authentic in that regard.  The image is sharp and detailed, black levels are fantastic, and there are no signs of digital tinkering.  Excellent job.  Similarly, the audio is robust and active on the few occasions when it needs to be.  This is largely a dialogue driven film with infrequent, though very intense, bursts of action, and the DTS-HD MA 5.1 audio track handles these extremes well, I had to do very little audio adjusting.

I must commend Third Window Films on their fascinating set of extras for Cold Fish.  There is no "behind the scenes" footage and there is no "making of footage", but what we do have it much more substantial that those types of things usually are.  First there is a fifty minute interview with co-writer Yoshiki Takahashi.  This is a really interesting conversation that goes into the inspiration for the script, the collaboration between Takahashi and Sono, and what Cold Fish could have been.  Rarely do we get to sit down with someone for almost an hour and make our way through the films we love.  But wait, we get to do it again with a forty minute interview with Jake Adelstein, a local journalist who covered the Saitama Dog Lover Murders, on which Cold Fish was loosely (as he'll remind you several times) based.  He gives very valuable insight into the Saitama case and its similarities and differences with Cold Fish as well as the state of crime and punishment in Japan.  Adelstein's interview is absolutely riveting and well worth your time.  The third major extra goes back to Yoshiki Takahashi, who was also the artist who created the Japanese poster for the film.  Takahashi talks about his references and what he'd hoped to accomplish with the poster image, more very interesting stuff!  The extras round out with some trailers for Cold Fish and other Third Window films.

Third Window have, once again, provided an excellent and very insightful package for Cold Fish.  The film is, of course, the meat of the package, but the extras go above and beyond and think outside the box in a very rewarding way.  I cannot recommend this set highly enough.

Third Window Films presents Cold Fish on a Region B locked Blu-ray, so be aware.