For those who have been following the hyperactive cinema of Eugene Kotlyarenko, it clearly was only a matter of time before he headed to Japan with where the deluge of screens everywhere in Tokyo with the ability to pull your mind in any direction makes the American director feel right at home. As with his previous film “Spree,” starring Joe Keery as a rideshare driver who streamed his pickups to go viral, the attention economy has taken over in “Vintage Violence” as a prime form of currency when it follows Carter (Cole Sprouse), a vlogging urban explorer who is in greater need than ever of an audience that could continue to support him financially when the death of his partner under mysterious circumstances has left him in a lurch, and by that score, Kotlyarenko can consider himself a rich man when it never lets up as far as keeping things interesting.
“Vintage Violence” has an inspired premise when Carter‘s adventures take him to an old mine around the California Bay Area where there doesn’t seem much but moldy food around, but the discovery of some old denim jeans catches the attention of Izumi (Kiko Mizuhara), a Japanese hostess a world away who happens to be watching his stream to kill time while entertaining inebriated businessmen. She’s be naturally inclined to help Carter as a fan, but there’s extra incentive when her boyfriend Hiro is deep in debt to the yakuza and she recognizes the value of the jeans with their button fly and lack of belt loops that could mean they’re original Levi’s from the 1880s and fetch a fortune if only Carter could get them to Japan. After entering the chat, the two hatch a plan to sell the jeans, but neither know exactly that Hiro has his own plans to get a greater share of the proceeds, not to mention the gangsters he has problems with.
Although Kotlyarenko nods to a grander satirical sweep, setting the film at the end of the American empire when the potential buyer of jeans, a young scion of a gangster named Edoga (Hiyo Miyazawa), covets the old denim as an American-made good of the variety the country hasn’t produced in at least half a century, “Vintage Violence” is more effective as a carefree exercise in mayhem. Teaming with cinematographer Sean Price Williams who helped define the frenzied style of the early Sadie Brothers films, the director puts Carter through the ringer when the denim falls into the wrong hands and the miasma of flashing lights and pulsing sounds can express the synapses firing within as well as the route he travels somewhere between the virtual and real world. When Carter loses his phone, it can feel like a deeper loss than the million-dollar bag when he is cut off from his audience and while some might flinch at learning a discounted place to stay is contingent on a livestream of him sleeping, it actually becomes a bonus amenity.
The online culture is one that “Vintage Violence” may have more nuance in depicting than Asian culture where fetishes pile up like an indiscriminate shotgun blast at targets that are already too easy, but the film has the energy to pass for a local delight as well as the kind of deranged villains that are likely to show up in a Takashi Mike film when besides Edoga, Carter, Izumi and Hiro have to contend with Ko (Pierre Taki), a fallen gangster that aims for vengeance against Edoga for taking his middle finger (since replaced by a spritzer with a cocktail of various intoxicants he’ll often ingest) and doesn’t care who he kills on the way to that goal. “Vintage Violence” is just as relentless as a thrill ride, occasionally exhausting but never dull and for as much as it indulges in the same immediate gratification as its hero traffics in, it has enough on its mind to stay there a little longer in yours.
“Vintage Violence” does not yet have U.S. distribution.