The shady S&M club’s one-year, no-cancellation contract prohibits subs from initiating activity and insists that an element of surprise be maintained: members never know exactly where or when the bondage babes will appear to administer a thrashing. Within five minutes of establishing the rules, director (and one-fifth of the writing team) Hitoshi Matsumoto has his hero, a timid furniture salesman and semi-single (his wife lies in a persistent vegetative state) father of one, attending prearranged pummelings. It just gets sillier, and exceedingly rough on the eyes — the entire film appears to have been shot through sandpaper and projected on a cardboard screen. The promise of a film noir comedy is never fulfilled, as events slowly progress from dark to dopey until finally, an unnecessarily self-reflexive surge kicks in — the film’s producers appear and begin blasting the work of their young, fatuous screenwriting duo as events unfold — and all roads lead to campy sci-fi and horror. (2013) — Scott Marks
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