PG | 1h 58m | Drama, Comedy | August 30, 2024
“Tokyo Cowboy” is a fish-out-of-water tale wherein one Hideki (Arata Iura), a Japanese food conglomerate employee, is dropped into Big Sky Country. There, the not-terribly-charismatic salaryman tries to sell craggy Montana ranch hands on the virtues of Wagyu beef—which he knows next to nothing about.
Husband-to-be Hideki, however, sees great profit potential. No more Black Angus, Herefords, or Santa Gertrudis cows! Special Japanese Wagyu instead! What could possibly go wrong?
Off They Go
Highly skeptical, Keiko sends awkward Hideki-San to Montana, accompanied by the USA-experienced and people-savvy Wada (Jun Kunimura) to help him schmooze with the Montana ranchers.
Unfortunately, instead of beating jet lag with a good night’s sleep, they’re invited out drinking, where the 70-something Wada falls off a mechanical bull and ends up in the hospital. Now, Hideki, the fish, is seriously out of water.
The Hollywood Treatment
Some of my critic colleagues like that “Tokyo Cowboy” falls in the understated indie-drama spectrum, rather than being presented as a typical Hollywood screwball, slapstick comedy.
I like all that too, but in concept only. Realistically speaking, I find the drama-first, comedy-last approach to this kind of material fraught with uneasy, cringey moments, and nervous laughter. And European-type cinematic moments of long, lingering, landscape shots with zero tension that shout “cinematography for cinematography’s sake!”
The you-are-there, you-are-in-his-shoes experience of a character who’s feeling extreme discomfort due to culture shock, an inability to express himself (especially while public speaking), and Japanese reticence and shyness in the face of hearty American backslapping—doesn’t really offer a lot in the way of an enjoyable cinematic payoff.
I would have actually preferred a Hollywood-style, fish-out-of-water comedy, such as the Jamaican bobsledding hilarity of “Cool Runnings.”
The only problem with that approach is that comedy is hard. Much more difficult to get right than drama. In that sense, my colleagues are right—the Hollywood funny version would likely be embarrassingly exploitative, possibly (if unintentionally) a little bit racist, and so on. But it’s got all the comedic building blocks. Comedy is often the combination of opposites, i.e., shiny black shoes and socks on the beach, or a bikini at a wedding. Just look at the movie poster. Done well, the film would have been an absolute hoot. Somebody should do a remake.
