7,1 stars? Really? That's the ratings this garbage movie gets before I wrote my review. Well for me it won an award, the award for dumbest movie ever made. And that's not even for the mediocre acting but for the story alone. I've seen my quota of really bad movies and I thought it could never get worse than those I saw before but I was wrong, as we have a new winner for dumbest movie ever. I just can't understand why anybody would like this movie. I really can't. Three guys running after eachother, with a ten meter gap for the entire movie, the first one with no weapon pursued by a guy with a gun (I have no clue why he just not shoots him as his on his tail for the whole time) and that guy pursued by a third guy with a knife. To tell you how ridiculous this movie is, at one point they just run next to eachother and just start laughing while the whole thing was killing eachother in the beginning. Three running guys for an entire movie, filled with other really bad actors from Japan. The best part (if I can say best part as this is the most ridiculous scene ever written) is when about 25 guys just stand in front of eachother with guns loaded and have a little stare off. What follows next I just can't spoil but it's amazingly bad. You have to see it to believe it, the dumbest movie ever.

Full of verve and energy yet little happens. Well, one thing doesn't happen, two things do and a chase ensues. One guy chases another and another chases him around the backstreets of Tokyo. A salaryman, a rock star drug addict and a yakuza member spend virtually the entire film chasing. There is some backstory provided and the whole makes a little more sense by the end. One difficulty for non Japanese is that this is clearly intended as a comedy but doesn't quite make. There is a scene, for instance where the three pass a pretty girl bending down in the street and they are distracted. In a Benny Hill sense with the appropriate cartoon music and only a hint of sexy visuals, there is probably a joke, whereas here the content is too prurient for us sensitive souls to find it amusing. The whole is worth a watch and in particular for those quickly disappearing little streets, here I understand mainly those behind Nakano Broadway.

SABU's debut feature 'Dangan Ranna', or 'Non-Stop' depending on your preference, is a bit of a mixed bag. A film about running, this is both slow and fast, violent yet humorous, some parts good, some parts bad.

Ironman Tomorowo Taguchi plays Yasuda, an inept man in work, romance and society in general. Annoyed at the world, he gets himself a gun and plans to rob a bank. And this is where the small stabs of humour arise. Forgetting to get himself a mask to cover his face for the job, he jumps into a convenience store to get one. But with thievery on his mind, he decides to try and steal one, and the alert clerk picks up on the would-be thief. A stand-off ensues, with Yasuda firing his weapon and escaping the resulting melee.

Yasuda then runs, pursued by the clerk, whom is then introduced to us as failed musician and drug addict, Aizawa in the form of flashbacks. Troubled by a yakuza hassling him for money and high on smack, he runs after Yasuda. Neither looking to stop anytime soon, we follow their running through the streets, passing Aizawa's yakuza agitator, Takeda. Also troubled by the recent murders of his boss and 'aniki', Takeda follows the chase in pursuit of Aizawa. What then follows is three men running, with seemingly no stopping likely.

SABU chooses to break up the running with flashbacks of the trio's lives, showing this is not a film about what the three are running after, but running from. All are troubled, and the endless running is their escape from their daily lives, acting as therapy as they mull over their problems. Seriousness though is mixed with humour, with the three all having sexual fantasies about a random woman they run passed, a free promotion acting as a marathon-style drinks break and running over Tokyo's Rainbow Bridge, only to run back over it in the opposite direction.

As the film develops, however, more characters are brought in. A yakuza war develops as a subplot and a group of four bored policeman exchange dialogue about their favourite guns. It's the introduction of a wider story where the film gets a little lost and confused in trying to build toward the conclusion. And that's maybe the film's problem: While a nice set-up with the reasoning for the three men running from life, how to bring it to an end is difficult, with the film's alternate title 'Non-Stop' maybe wishful thinking for SABU.

This could have been kept as a short, ending with the characters simply running and running. But obviously as this is a feature, some sort of conclusion is required. This may be where some naivety for a debut director comes in, but the film's end is not a total disaster.

A strong idea, with a good balance of humour thrown in where necessary, this is filmmaking for the fun of it. Released two years before Germany's 'Run Lola Run' - a film also short and undecided on its conclusion - it shows SABU is a filmmaker with lots of interesting and playful ideas to work with, though as a then novice, maybe this idea just ran out of a little steam.

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