“Vintage Violence” opens with Cole Sprouse live-streaming himself through a Tokyo street, and the screen fills up faster than the eye can take it in. Commenters flood the chat box with insults and trivia about the character, and the film barely slows down from there. That’s the point: Eugene Kotlyarenko, who made 2020’s “Spree,” wants to capture the relentless now of social media, and he does it with a density that feels almost impossible to process.
The film follows Carter, a loud American social-media personality played by Sprouse, as he travels to Japan. He is lured by Izumi Adachi, played by Kiko Mizuhara, who promises him huge sums for selling vintage denim she found during a stream. That denim becomes the Macguffin that drives the plot, and the film keeps moving, chasing deals, threats and strange encounters across the city.
Live-Stream Density
The opening is the strongest part of the film. Sprouse streams himself in vertical format while chat-box commenters offer random abuse and character history at a pace no viewer could keep up with. The film trusts that overload to establish its world, and it works. The information comes faster than it can be absorbed, which is exactly the texture Kotlyarenko is after.
The chase scenes are where the film’s ideas land best. In one sequence, Carter’s phone is stolen, and he tracks the thief by listening to the Bluetooth signal from his earbuds. The closer he gets, the clearer the sound becomes, until it stops entirely. It is a clever use of a modern technology to build suspense, and it shows Kotlyarenko’s facility with finding novel ways to deliver information.
A Familiar Energy
The title borrows from a John Cale album, and the film delivers scenes of bloodletting committed by bizarre, scenery-chewing yakuza members. The energy hovers around a bloodier-than-baseline Takashi Miike movie from the mid-2000s. But Kotlyarenko’s approach is texturally very now, even when it draws on familiar territory.
The film is full of outré elements. There is a hotel that seems to have been founded by the same TV programming team that made content in Olivier Assayas’s “demonlover,” and a gangster whose severed finger has been replaced by a spray bottle of poisonous mist. These setpieces scream “clip me and put me online!” and they arrive fast enough that the film rarely lets a viewer catch its breath.
| Element | How It Shows Up |
|---|---|
| Social-media overload | Chat-box commenters flooding the screen with insults and trivia |
| Modern technology | Tracking a thief by Bluetooth signal from earbuds |
| Vintage denim | The Macguffin driving the plot |
| Yakuza violence | Bizarre, scenery-chewing gangsters |
| Cult-movie setpieces | Hotels, spray bottles, severed fingers |
Stock Parts, New Noise
For all its determination to be firmly of the now and provide midnight-movie crassness, “Vintage Violence’s” constituent parts can be surprisingly stock. Kotlyarenko is cinematically omnivorous: the film riffs on everything from “North by Northwest” to “Wanderlust,” and it leans on Japanese filmmakers throughout.
But the constant maximalism starts to wear thin. Scenes scream for clipping, and the film piles on so much that the cumulative effect is more enervating than energizing. The film is admirably committed to living up to the mayhem of its forebears, but like many of them, it loses momentum under the weight of its own excess.
A Foreign Director’s Japan
The film addresses a potential objection about a foreign director making a film that claims insight into Japanese characters’ interiority. Carter is ritualistically insulted as a gaijin, or outsider, throughout, and the film internalizes that critique rather than ignoring it. Sprouse plays Carter as a serviceable lead, adapting to new forms of mayhem while slowly reaching a form of moral rehabilitation, for which he is rewarded with a romantic arc.
Sprouse is a capable presence, and he carries the film’s wilder sequences without losing control. But the film’s reliance on him as its anchor means that the quieter stretches feel less grounded than the chaos around them.
What Sticks
The best parts of “Vintage Violence” are the ones that commit fully to their own logic. The Bluetooth chase is a great example of taking a modern technology and bending it to narrative purpose. The spray-bottle gangster is a memorable image, even if it is pure excess.
The worst parts are the ones that try to do too much at once. The film’s relentless energy can become exhausting, and the constant arrival of new setpieces starts to blur together. There is no meaningful trace of the past beyond fetishizable commodities in the film, only the relentless present, and that focus on the now is both its strength and its limitation.
“Vintage Violence” is Kotlyarenko’s attempt to make a film that feels of the moment, and it mostly succeeds. The density of the live-stream opening sets a standard that the rest of the film struggles to match. The chase scenes are inventive, the setpieces are memorable, and the film’s refusal to slow down is part of its identity.
It is a gonzo fever dream, and it knows it. The film asks to be watched fast, and it rewards viewers who can keep up. Those who can will find a wild, energetic ride. Those who cannot will find themselves overwhelmed.
The film’s flaws are real, but they are the flaws of ambition. Kotlyarenko is trying to capture a moment, and he does it with a relentless energy that few directors attempt. The result is a film that is often exhausting, but rarely boring. It is a hyper-online freakout, and it is exactly what it says it is.
Source material: “‘Vintage Violence’ Review: Cole Sprouse Heads Up a Hyper-Online Gonzo Freakout in Japan,” Variety.
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