Shark Skin Man and Peach Hip Girl (1998)

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Good concept, poorly executed.

Brilliant and touching

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

I'd heard this Japanese flick is edgy, creatively interesting, a "cool new thang" on the Asian movie-making scene ... maybe even something as innovative as Hideo Nakata's "Ringu" or Chan-wook Park's "Oldboy", especially the latter.You can imagine my disappointment when, instead, I found the movie disjointed both narratively and cinematically (though not in a way that a film aficionado appreciates), cliché-ridden, even sadly silly instead of funny --- on the whole, a very bad knock- off of the "Pulp Fiction" style.I stopped watching after 30 minutes, when I gave up on it becoming something more than it is.

My main impression with this movie is that something, somehow, has got lost on the way.It might be that the script has been adapted from a manga; some situations and some of the characters antics, dragged out from their context, look so wacky they end to be grotesque. Nonetheless, one of the strongest point of the movie are the characters themselves - Yamada in particular.The plot is the weakest one, it doesn't really make sense and I ended up suspecting that some elements has been simply cut because they didn't fit in the run time.However, I've seen this movie in Japanese with subtitles, so I really can't comment about the "witty dialogs" which are supposed to be another strong point.This movie is occasionally entertaining, but fails to leave a mark: it reminded me somehow of "I Went Down" (1997), which is definitely more entertaining than this one, tough.

After reading the other comments, then actually seeing the film, it simply doesn't measure up.The first 1/3 of the film is quite a blast, with nearly everything the reviews mention - fast editing and sassy dialogue, wacky characters and, for good measure, perhaps cinema history's shortest explicit sex scene (about four seconds).But after this part, it loses most of its puff and all of its potential originality. A bit like getting on a rollercoaster, having a ripper ride, but the machine slowing to a crawl just before the first big dip, and crawling home slowly.In conclusion, it does have good stuff, mostly at the beginning. Looks like it wanted to be a weird take on Pulp Fiction but got seriously lost.

I saw S.S. Man & P.H. Girl at the Hawaii International Film Festival in Nov. 98, and it took my breath away. This flick is the funniest, coolest, most invigorating piece of eye candy I've ever seen. Based on a Japanese manga, this debut film from Ishii (previously a director of Japanese commercials) is a road movie about a young woman on the run from her domineering and perverted uncle who meets up with a young man on the run from the stylish gangsters he's ripped off. The gangsters are the funniest, most outrageous, coolest bunch of baddies I've ever seen. Their dialogue is great, their costumes are incredible, and they're all so enjoyable to watch that it's always sad when one gets rubbed out. The uncle also sends someone after the pair on the run, a diminutive little freak who would totally steal the show in any other movie. Here, he just adds to the mix.I can't really describe how much I enjoyed this movie, but I remember that at the end of it, my face hurt from smiling so much. I think I was grinning during the entire film... If you're a fan of the films of Lynch, Tarantino, Jeunet, Boyle, Besson, the Coens, John Woo, Ringo Lam, and Tsui Hark, then you have GOT to see this movie. The funny thing about S.S. Man and P.H. Girl is that it's so over-the-top that you know it's a parody of the work of some of the above directors, but the damn thing is so much fun that it actually works as a "cool lovers on the run movie," and not just a parody of one. In fact, I thought it worked so well that it is now my favorite film of this genre. Tarantino was in the audience when I saw this movie, and when Ishii answered questions at the end of the film, and someone asked him who influenced him, he grinned at QT, and said (through his translator) something like "I think you know the answer to that." (subsequently QT hired Ishii to direct the animated sequence in Kill Bill, so I guess they hit it off). Perhaps the lesson here is that there's no such thing as too derivative.Some people note that the film has some slow moments. Interestingly, having seen the movie quite a few times by now, what sticks with me now are some of the quieter romantic and/or contemplative moments, especially the penultimate scene in the car where Samehada's former partner talks about seeing God.