(Rialto) 

Big-budget disaster flick, based on 1973 Sakyo Komatsu novel 

The Sinking Of Japan is a familiar story to Japanese audiences – first came Sakyo Komatsu’s novel Japan Sinks in 1973, then a filmed version that same year, as well as a TV show and this 2006 high-budget remake (and I haven’t even mentioned the book sequel and parody movie Everything Other Than Japan Sinks). The remake is directed by special effects whiz Shinji Higuchi and is firmly a Japanese take on the Roland Emmerich / Michael Bay school of filmmaking – glossy, red-hued Armageddon styled cinematography, spectacularly recreated natural disasters and an uninvolving central love story. In other words, it’s what they call a “critic-proof” movie, the flick winning first place in the Golden Raspberries (the Japanese equivalent of famous dross celebrator, The Razzies) and simultaneously raking it in at its homeland box office. The plot is fairly simple – shifts in tectonic plates are causing earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions all around Japan, destined to ultimately plunge the entire country into a watery grave. Like many contemporary disaster movies, humanity’s hope lies in the hands of a handful of individuals, including a “the government won’t listen” scientist and a rather weedy submarine pilot. For all its faults (no pun intended), The Sinking Of Japan somehow avoids the douchiness at the centre of Camps Emmerich and Bay. It delves deeper into the technical side of what the Japanese may do to prevent the ultimate disaster, these portions of the film sharing the documentary-like approach of Philip Kaufman’s The Right Stuff (1983). And as tidal waves crash into townships, earthquakes reduce ordered landscapes to rubble and lava explodes and oozes malevolently, Higuchi really does deliver. It’s a pizza and beer movie.

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MATT THROWER

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