50-something years into a seismic career, Shinya Tsukamoto has embarked upon the rare English-language project. And in branching out, one of Japanese cinema’s preeminent figures—director of the Tetsuo: The Iron Man series, A Snake in June, Bullet Ballet, and Tokyo Fist, whose work extends to performances in Martin Scorsese’s Silence, Takashi Miike’s Ichi the Killer, and Hideaki Anno’s Shin Godzilla—has still managed to tell a story of national relevance while retaining his bent towards violence and its consequences. Ahead of a September 11 release in Japan, the first trailer for the film (shot across New York, Okinawa, Thailand, and Vietnam) has arrived.
Forming the third part of a war trilogy comprising 2014’s Fires on the Plain and 2023’s Shadow of Fire, the closing piece Mr. Nelson, Did You Kill People? concerns, in the director’s words and per Google Translate, “the wounds borne by the perpetrator of war”—this instance being Allen Nelson, a U.S. soldier whose tour of Vietnam induced significant mental scarring that later compelled him to travel across Japan and deliver more than 1,200 lectures on “true war.”
Mark Merphy makes his feature debut as the young Nelson, while Rodney Hicks (best-known for Broadway performances in Rent and Come from Away) portrays the elder iteration and Geoffrey Rush plays his VA counselor. The first preview shows hints of combat that, whatever this project’s more dramatic leanings, is characteristic of Tsukamoto’s style—he’s stated Mr. Nelson is a film that “must be made precisely because the world is becoming an increasingly volatile place.”
Here’s the distributor’s synopsis: “The protagonist is Allen Nelson, an African American man who enlisted in the military at eighteen to escape poverty and discrimination. In the brutal war zone of Vietnam, he learned only one thing: how to kill as many people as possible. Stripped of the ability to think for himself, he carried out slaughter on the battlefield without a moment’s hesitation. All he gained in return was a meager wage and PTSD. Even now, the presence of people, the stench of decay, and the sound of firecrackers trigger flashbacks. After being evicted and becoming homeless at twenty-three, the person who anchored Allen to the world was Dr. Daniels, a counselor at a veterans’ hospital.”
Watch the preview below:
The post Shinya Tsukamoto Goes to War In Trailer for English-Language Vietnam Film Mr. Nelson, Did You Kill People? first appeared on The Film Stage.
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