[yasr_overall_rating]
Two best friends spent the last fifteen years touring the country in their performance art punk band. When one of them decides to quit, they both face deeper challenges than expected.
There are some people that you look at and you wonder: how the hell do they make money doing that?! The Japanese punk band Peelander-Z are just those people. How the hell this crazy bunch make a living from what they do is totally baffling, but they somehow do. “Mad Tiger” is a documentary that follows the intrepid band of misfits, who are all Japanese but met in New York, as they tour America doing their schtick. This amounts to wearing bizarre color-coded outfits, complete with matching color-coded personas, shouting and howling very loudly at and with their audiences in smoky, dingy clubs and literally throwing themselves around all over the place. They call themselves a “Japanese Action Comic Punk band hailing from the Z area of Planet Peelander.” No wonder they’re somewhat of a cult outfit.
Being a documentary, there is the obvious fly-on-the-wall aspect of the film. The formula is in place. First we must meet the band in bits and starts as led by Kengo Hioki, known as Peelander Yellow, and who lives and breathes that color (and the band) to the hilt. There’s his shy wife, Yumiko Kanazaki, who lets rip all her punk grrrl energy on stage as Peelander Pink. And there’s Peelander Red, known on planet Earth as Kotaro Tsukada. The other Peelanders, Green, Purple and Blue, flit about in the background, but the film’s main focus is on the strong-willed Yellow. At first it’s all smiles and they all seem to be having a great, most irreverent time, which is quite engaging as a viewer. They earnestly explain their characters and their imaginary planet, and go from venue to venue delighting their mostly Millennial fans who clearly enjoy the band in an ironic, loose way. Their music is, frankly, noise. Peelander-Z is a galaxy away from real punk bands like The Sex Pistols or The Ramones. Theirs is clearly more performance art, with lots of crazy outfits with guitar and drums and screaming thrown in, and even calling it that is a stretch. But the dedication is real and fun is being had by all, making it all amiable enough. Or so it seems.
The cracks start to appear soon enough. Red decides that he wants to leave after 12 years with the band so that he can, well, move on and forward. At first Yellow seems to take it quite well, but soon the alpha male in him takes over. The tone of the film becomes decidedly less cheerful and becomes more sober, even quite dark, as Yellow confronts Red in quite an aggressive manner. Then Green also declares he wants to leave, after confessing to the camera about just how controlling and ‘difficult’ having Yellow as leader can get. Yellow seems to descend into a dark place of melancholic retrospection, even taking a trip back to Japan to visit his family. At this point the film starts to meander, seeming to have lost focus and lacking the energy that kept it spiriting along. But these are characters (rather, real people) that are so unusual and quirky in their life choices and chosen careers that one is compelled to keep watching.
Is “Mad Tiger” a great documentary? No, it is not. It lacks the bittersweet, even heart-wrenching pathos of Sachi Gervasi’s “Anvil! The Story of Anvil,” another music documentary that follows a band around. Nor does it have the charming quirkiness (and excellent production values) of Zachary Heinzerling’s terrific “Cutie and the Boxer,” another story about Japanese artists in New York City. With this documentary, Michael Haertlin and Jonathan Yi are too pedestrian in their direction, with a story that lacks focus and tighter editing required. Even so, “Mad Tiger” is still a watchable and enjoyable little film. And I for one am glad that there are people as resolutely individual as the Peelander-Z crowd that are right here on Earth with us.
Now playing in Los Angeles (Downtown Independent) and in New York City May 6th (IFC Center) with a national release to follow
