(IMAGE: Purdie Distribution)
Purdie Distribution. 2024. Comedy/Drama. 118 minutes.
Grade 4.5 / 5
Tokyo Cowboy is a gentle movie that in some ways may be the most daring debut feature of the year. Fulfilling a decades-old dream that began when he was a recently graduated and multi-award winning alumnus of the prestigious film school at UCLA, veteran TV producer Marc Marriott has bet his professional future not on the erotic thriller or wannabe franchise horror flick the current conventional wisdoms might have steered a first time filmmaker toward but on a bi-lingual character comedy about a Japanese businessman tasked with converting a failing Montana cattle ranch into switching its livestock to lucrative but hard to raise Wagyu beef.
The contours of a classic Hollywood “fish out of water” story might seem dimly discernible in that synopsis (“Here’s the pitch boss – It’s City Slickers meets Local Hero!”), but Tokyo Cowboy is a film centered on nuance and incremental growth. Comedy comes from character, aided by a quietly nimble performance as businessman Hideki from veteran Japanese lead Arata Iura and by the still and majestic visual pallette Marriott and his cinematographer Oscar Ignacio Jimenez evolve — a kind of John Ford-meets-Rene Magritte approach that perfectly meshes the surreal bustle of Tokyo skyscrapers and the mountainous Big Sky Country where Hideki learns and grows.
The main cast is deliciously naturalistic for a modern comedy. Hideki’s corporate-minded fiancee is played by Mozart in the Jungle cast member Ayako Fujitani, who completely humanizes a character that could have turned into a thin “woman-as-obstacle-to–male-fullfillment” trope in less capable hands. As Javier, the misfit ranch hand who becomes Hideki’s inadvertent cowboy sensei, Goya Robles brings a kind of masculine tenderness rarely seen in a Western genre piece. The sole broad performance is an unanticipated delight: Kill Bill baddie Jun Kunimura shows a heretofore unexplored comedic side as Wada, a rascally cowman who might have been played by Walter Brennan or Smiley Burnett in another country and another time — he’s like a Roy Rogers B-movie Western character who accidentally originated in Japan. Marriott is invested in the reality of every performance, and even his minor cowpuncher support players bristle with depth and clarity.
An art film that’s also a crowdpleaser, Tokyo Cowboy has a big heart, and deserves any audience it finds.
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