By day Hiroki Sakai works as a pin-setter in a pachinko parlor. By night, he... well, he goes to dinner, has two beers at precisely seven, sets more pins at the pachinko parlor, then returns home to work on a jigsaw puzzle before retiring to bed.

This is the hero of Shinji Aoyama’s Wild Life, a film about a man who leads anything but one. To be fair, Sakai did once lead a Wild Life, though we are shown none of it here. We do hear, however, that he was once a boxer, but that he retired in order to live a more predictable existence. Well, that he’s certainly gotten, though it’s not too long until things become a lot more complicated for our young hero (I mean, if they didn’t, we wouldn’t have much of a movie, would we?)

Anyway, things start to go amiss when Sakai discovers the local yakuza is out to take over the pachinko racket in this part of town, which obviously does not bode well for the owner of the parlor whom he faithfully serves and whose daughter he has started to form a romantic bond with. From here, things quickly spiral out of control, with the parlor boss being kidnapped, Sakai being enlisted to help find him, and a mysterious videotape apparently holding the answer to all of the unrest that has suddenly entered Sakai’s anything-but-wild life.

Whew. That was close. I’ll admit something: I just barely made it through that synopsis without hitting something I didn’t understand, which is a tall order when dealing with a film like this. While definitely well-made and showing very accomplished craftsmanship, Wild Life, I must confess, definitely proved mighty confusing to this poor reviewer. As you hopefully can tell from above, I could manage the basics; but there really is a lot going on in this movie and it’s very difficult to get a grip on all of it. The film is full of a lot of characters, most of whom are introduced quickly and kind of vaguely. Similarly, it’s a bit difficult to keep track of how everyone is associated, in addition to exactly who everyone is. There’s one kid in the movie who seems to be a pachinko player, for instance, but yet keeps appearing in personal moments with various characters; and I could never quite figure out exactly who he is or what he’s doing there.

Chalk it up to cultural ignorance or mental incapability (or perhaps a little bit of both), whichever you prefer, but, while I could keep track of the basics, I just really wasn’t able to keep up with Wild Life as a whole; and its languid pace, while unique and appreciated by me on the first viewing, would probably make it a chore to watch the necessary amount of times for me to fully get everything out of it that I was supposed to. Nevertheless, on some level, I did enjoy Wild Life: it contains gifted acting from its likeable leads, some beautiful shots and compositions, and definitely has a style that is both unique and engaging. It’s just not exactly the type of film I can see myself watching again very soon. In the end, it’s recommendable; but I’d advise you to rent it if possible before committing to a purchase.

As for Artsmagic’s DVD presentation, things looked quite good. The film is presented in 16x9 widescreen and, while described as being 1.85:1 on the back of its box, measures to more like 2:1 (the framing seems proper, nevertheless, though I can’t figure out why it’s also appearing windowboxed on my computer). The slightly dark nature of some of Artsmagic’s earlier transfers seemed to have been fixed; and, despite a few small instances of moiré, everything generally looked very nice. Audio is presented in both Japanese 2.0 and 5.1 and is accompanied by optional English subtitles that are easy to read and free of errors.

As for extras, this disk has fewer than most previous Artsmagic releases. Things start off with a bio/filmography section and move on to an interesting interview with director Shinji Aoyama, who discusses the making of this film, its mixing of genres, and his cinematic influences all in a quick 18 minutes.

Finally, things wrap up with a feature commentary by Jasper Sharp, an Asian cinema enthusiast and friend of Tom Mes, who himself has provided some fantastic commentaries on previous Artsmagic releases. Sadly, I’ve got to say that I wasn’t so bowled over by Mr. Sharp’s track, despite the fact that his enthusiasm is just as earnest as Mr. Mes’. I definitely would have liked it if Sharp had perhaps guided his audience through this rather complicated movie a little better; instead, he rarely pays attention to what’s going on onscreen and turns the talk into more of a discussion of Asian cinema in general. While this is interesting for a little while, the talk goes off on so many tangents that several times I wondered how we got where we currently were, often discussing something that, as far as I could tell, wasn’t related to the film at all. In Mes’ commentaries, not only would he discuss the Asian cinema scene in general, but Mes would pay more attention to the film itself, talking about its place in its director’s filmography, various stylistic / symbolic techniques being employed, etc. None of that here: this is just history, history, history; and, while it starts out interesting, it nevertheless eventually does become stale.

So, all in all, I can really only say again what I said before: this is most definitely a “rent it” situation. While Wild Life is well-done, it’s nevertheless also probably more confusing than it needs to be, which, in the end, would make it a bit of a chore to sit through multiple times. While some really excellent extra features could probably have helped shed some more light on all of the mysteries contained in this movie, I felt that, unfortunately, the features generally fell a bit short, too (while the Aoyama interview is good, it is nevertheless more about nuts-and-bolts than what’s going on in the film itself). Still, I wouldn’t dissuade you from checking out this disk; it’s just important to know that you should go in with some reservations.