This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

Viewed on DVD. Sound-track rock = four (4) stars; subtitles/translations = three (3) stars; scenario = two (2) stars; cinematography/editing = one (1) star. Director Gakuryû Ishii has foisted on movie audiences a low-budget TV-style music video consisting of unrelenting, meaningless (and repetitious) violence. This plot-less, overly-long, eye sore starts with some okay rock music which dissipates as the film moves along (thereby losing the movie's excuse to continue!). Ishii drums up a future Tokyo where streets are always filled with rock concert riots and gang warfare at night. Sometimes the police and, of course, Yakuza join in the rampage. "Acting" consists of mugging and shouting. Rock-music "score" is pretty good. Exterior sets (city dumps and abandoned industrial buildings) are strikingly original. Interior sets pretty much look the same because they likely are. Subtitles (which can not be turned off) capture about half of the song lyrics and dialog. Both translated dialog and lyrics appear in white at screen bottom with lyric text italicized. (Use of two colors would have prevented confusion as to what was what.) Signs are not translated. Cinematography (semi-wide screen, color) and editing quality is what one might expect from precocious children of five using their cell phone cameras! Shots (using super jerky hand-held cameras) are mostly monotonously limited to: out-of-focus somethings; repeats of accelerated street-level scenes from motor cycles; and in-your-face close ups of "actors." Wear lines turn up occasionally. Just turn off the video garbage and enjoy the punk rock bands on the sound track! WILLIAM FLANIGAN, PhD.

I'd like to start this comment section by first off saying I do enjoy and appreciate to a certain extent the cinematic agenda of "cyberpunk cinema". I really enjoyed Fukui's "Rubber's Lover" and I appreciate the aesthetic genius of films like "Tetsuo", "Pinocchio 964", even the recent "Bottled Fools". But with that said and done, that is basically what all these films are, simply aesthetically pleasing. That statement reaches its height with this earlier film called Burst City by cyberpunk pioneer Sogo Ishii. With so clever, innovative and kinetic cinematography Ishii just creates a clash between Mad Max and Rock n Roll High School. There is no substance to this style, not even some of the obscure images that one may be used to from seeing Tsukamoto's earlier films. And actually in some ways, Burst City's style obstructs the viewer from any type of cohesion so what ensues is total anarchy. I was really excited about seeing this early film from Ishii too because I first really enjoyed the psychological thriller "Angel Dust" and then came to enjoy his return to form in "Dead End Run" but "Burst City" turned out to be a major disappointment.

I have seen a lot of Japanese Movies, and this must have been one of the worst i have seen in all those years. The Punk Music might be appealing to some people, but the rest of the film is awful. The so called Camera-work looks like they just ran around with the Cam, the "violent" scenes some People liked are cut fast and filmed with an extremely unsteady Camera so you don't see anything at all. Weird Gangs fighting each other makes it looks like an extremely cheap "The Riffs" aka "Bronx Warriors" RipOff, which was originally released 1982 as well. All in all the movie just was a mix of pointless and bad fights, mixed with punk music... Even for a giant Musicvideo the Visuals are extremely bad. Don't let yourself fool you by People how compare this to work by Miike or Kitano, because even their worst movies look like Oscar-winners compared to this waste of material.

A shame few will get the chance to see this movie. It was suggested to me as a Japanese Death Race 2000. Oh, but it is so much more. A dystopian future against a backdrop of angry Japanese punk rock. Burst City is a raw look at an overamped society with its frantic, hyper camera work and loud brash music. As a fictional peek into punk rock, Burst City is still leaps and bounds above any other attempts. Well worth the look. Be prepared to search, however, and I don't believe there is a subtitled or dubbed version in existence. This is a shame as the film deserves greater exposure.