Tetsuo: The Bullet Man is the trilogy capper to Shinya Tsukamoto’s Tetsuo series, which started back in 1989. All three films follow the common setup of a business man being hit by a car, with Cronenbergian mutations following suit. Metal meets flesh as the protagonists grotesquely evolve into new beings. Long live the new flesh!

Tetsuo: The Iron Man is incredible in a hyper-kinetic, cyberpunk fashion. This set the standard for the films that followed, with minimal dialogue, editing and cinematography that’s faster and crazier than all the Bourne movies combined.

Bullet Man suffers in many departments, which is a bummer since I’ve been waiting years for this. The art design that was so minimalist and DIY in the first film isn’t seen here. The techo-evolved protagonist in this film looks flat-out goofy, with a face that makes me reminisce about Frankenberry, were he drenched in chromatic colors. The cinematography was lazy, as there are quick cuts lifted form the first two films. Tsukamoto likes to help out a lot with the camera, and his influence shows: you have never seen a Tsukamoto film as shaky as this. The editing is like a gloomy industrial band’s music video on neon cocaine. It’s rapid fire, so fast and utterly incoherent at times. I shouldn’t have to struggle this hard to train my eyes on an image.

What really bummed me out was the lame plot. Part of the mystique of the first two films was that the iron man origins were non-existent. Tsukamoto felt like it was a good idea to make it the government’s fault. It felt like watching a Sci-Fi Channel original movie on a Saturday night. Remember how the Sci-Fi channel produced Cube 2: Hypercube? They always seem to work in a government conspiracy subplot.

This is Tsukamoto’s first Eglish speaking film, and the acting is atrocious. The people acting obviously couldn’t speak English that well, so why not keep it in his original language? Hopefully the trilogy ends here, as I’d rather not see another entry if it’s in the vein of Bullet Man.