2 out of 5

Director: Hitoshi Matsumoto

As we are culturally aware of Godzilla and superheroes, director Matsumoto’s “Big Man Japan” was a lot more palatable for an American audience, its themes translating well enough.  “Symbol” owes more to the director’s roots as a part of a Japanese comedy duo, and thus the timing of and shooting style of a lot of the gags in the film feels VERY cultural – in the same way that, say, Benny Hill is cultural – so while that part of the movie initially annoyed me, I can accept it as fitting for the actor and the vibe of the flick.  That being said, the movie feels more like an idea than a film, and an idea that’s been unnecessarily padded by those gags, so overall it’s sort of a snooze and a failure.  We start with two seemingly disconnected stories – a luchadore preparing for a fight and a Japanese man who wakes up in the surreal world of a square room with many phallic-shaped buttons to push which seem to cause random items to appear.  Eventually these two “stories” are connected, but when the veil is removed, it underlines that padding feeling – even though the luchadore bits are more interesting (and I dunno Mexican wrestling from a pile of sand, but it was shot very well and energetically, so kudos to Matsumoto for getting the flavor down believably and assumedly truthfully) because they have some characters and some momentum, that part of the story’s inclusion ends up being pretty much a delay to build up to illustrating Matsumoto’s “idea” of, maybe, how the world works.  It looks a lot better than it should – the high concept could’ve flubbed on screen, but it’s done uniquely and captured well – but the flick, overall, lacks impact and would’ve been more acceptable as a short or, alternatively, expanded with a more thoughtful connection between the storylines.