An unidentified young man (Shinji Takeda) is going around Tokyo and shooting people, seemingly at random. Because of the thick, Coke bottle glasses he puts on ahead of time so that he can see before he pulls the trigger, he is given the nickname of Four Eyes. The newspapers latch onto this and continue to run stories about him with attention grabbing headlines like 'Four Eyes Strikes Again!' and because of this, the citizens of Tokyo are putting some pressure on the police to apprehend him.

Hinano (Hinano Yoshikawa) is the seventeen-year-old sister of one of the policeman involved in tracking Four Eyes down. She works in a beauty parlor and lives with her brother and is in a transitional period in her life where she has to adjust to having a real job and the responsibilities that that entails. One night, while taking the subway home after work, she recognizes Four Eyes from a composite sketch that her brother has taken home from the police station. His bizarre behavior on the train catches her attention.

The next day she sees him again and after calling in sick for work, follows him around the area he lives in. When he finds her following him, she pretends to be having problems with her video camera, in hopes that he won't think she was tailing him and recording him. He takes an immediate interest in her and after playing some video games, takes her back to his apartment. They strike up a relationship and she begins to fall for him in a strange way. The shootings continue though, and she knows what he is doing is wrong.

The best thing that Jean-Pierre Limosin's Tokyo Eyes has going for it is a great visual style. The compositions used in the film are interesting and the camera focuses in on things you wouldn't normally expect it to (pay attention to the record player in the scene where Four Eyes first takes Hinano back to his place) even bother with. This odd cinematography, combined with some slick camera movements, ensures that the film looks great from start to finish. It's eclectic looking and unusual enough to at least keep your eyes interested, even if your brain starts to fall asleep twenty minutes into the movie.

And sadly, that's exactly what happened. Despite the fact that I'd gotten a full eight hours of sleep before I sat down to watch this puppy, I fell asleep. Once you get over the visuals, it's not hard at all to lose interest in the characters or their situations. When Four Eyes' motives are revealed they don't justify any of what he did and considering he's just going around shooting people and injuring them (not actually killing anyone), they actually contradict his actions. Add to that the fact that Takeda plays his character as such a flamboyant and obnoxious person that it's hard to hope for anything but the worst to happen to him. Yoshikawa as Hinano is pretty as a picture to look at but not much better than Takeda in the acting department, her character is shallow and a little too much of a kid to be believable.

Despite the fact that 'Beat' Takashi Kitano shows up for a minute to add his undeniably cool screen presence to the film, the real star of the film is simply the visual coolness that it emanates. Sadly, that's not enough to make sitting through the film more than once a worthwhile activity.

Video:

The anamorphic 1.85.1 widescreen transfer is very nice. Colors look great, the transfer is nice and detailed with a very clear picture, and there is only the slightest bit of print damage noticeable in one or two instances. While the film does have an intentionally muted color scheme the transfer does a nice job of bringing that to the screen faithfully – lots of browns and earth tones are used and instead of looking lifeless and pale, they look natural and organic. Kino has done an admirable job on the picture quality of this release and the only relevant flaw is some minor edge enhancement.