60
Village Voice by Amy Nicholson
Tokyo Tribe is Sono cackling hysterically while smashing a keytar. Sure, there are a few sour notes, but he's made a great blast of noise.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
50
The Hollywood Reporter by Clarence Tsui
Tokyo Tribe is a spectacle more in its form than its content.
60
The latest from the culty maker of “Suicide Club,” “Love Exposure” and last year’s TIFF Midnight Madness audience-award winner, “Why Don’t You Play in Hell?,” is so insistently over-the-top from the start that the results are just fairly amusing when they ought to be exhilarating.
75
The A.V. Club by Ignatiy Vishnevetsky
Sion Sono’s hip-hop musical is a chiefly visual pleasure, in part because most of the cast can’t rap worth a damn; its warped frame bounces between shimmering neons and fluorescents, disco-ball samurai suits, living statues, and all kinds of things that have been painted gold for gold’s sake.
75
Sion Sono's film imagines gangs not as rebels without a cause, but a lost generation of displaced, poisoned youths.
60
The Guardian by Leslie Felperin
Amusingly tacky and offensive though it is, proceedings grow a bit monotonous, because all the tunes have pretty much the same beat and everything is pitched at the same hysterical, OTT level.
40
Los Angeles Times by Martin Tsai
While the gangsta lyrics and posturing are laden with cliché, there's still some novelty in sustaining a rap narration for nearly two hours. But whenever the music stops, the film can never stay in the game by landing on a figurative chair.
50
The New York Times by Mike Hale
"The Warriors” and the “Mad Max” films will come to mind as you watch Tokyo Tribe, and from scene to scene Mr. Sono’s visual inventiveness and sure hand with action stand up to the comparison. The cumulative effect, however, is numbing.
50
It’s a garish mess, more interesting as a concept and production design exercise than as a movie. But you’ve never seen anything quite like it.
60
Time Out London by Tom Huddleston
It’s a wild, at times exhilarating watch – but an exhausting one.