Tokyo Cowboy – Review

This film was screened at the 21st annual Tallgrass Film Festival.

I absolutely adore a fish-out-of-water comedy. We don’t get enough these days and the feel-good films of my youth are becoming a distant memory after the last fifteen years of big-budget dominance. Along comes Marc Marriott with the pitch, “What if an ambitious Japanese businessman went country?”

Tokyo Cowboy, directed by Marc Marriott, takes this idea and runs with it. Written by Dave Boyle Mozart in the Jungle actress Ayako Fujitani, who co-stars in the film as love interest Keiko, the script takes a sweet and humorous approach to combining a collision of Japanese and American Western cultures. The move from the dense city of Tokyo to the wide open plains of Montana is not only a cultural shock, it’s a very specific part of America that is portrayed as much kinder than it could have been.

Hideki (Arata Iura) works as a brand manager for a Japanese conglomerate. He volunteers to take on an impossible task – revitalizing a ranch his employers acquired by introducing Wagyu into their herds to raise the value of their beef and save it from dissolving. His employers think this is just bold enough to be exciting while his boss/girlfriend, Keiko, has severe reservations. Hiring Waguy expert Wada (Jun Kunimura), he heads out to try and save the place and learns a bit about the simple life along the way.

This concept should be obnoxious. It’s corny and could have a pretty severe undertone of imposing American rural values on a modern man. This bullet is thankfully dodged and instead, multiple different cultures layer themselves together to produce something that wouldn’t work without each component. Even the sweet, anime-loving hotel worker Cindy (Scout Smith) manages to be more sweet and lovely when her attempts to use Japanese phrases could have merely been insensitive. Marriott has threaded a difficult needle with a deft hand and it turned out absolutely charming.

While Hideki is the lead of the film I think the MVP awards have to go to Goya Robles and Stephanie Hernandez, who play Javi and Veronica respectively. Javi takes a shine to Hideki and Robles’s performance is so caring and sincere that he manages to steal every scene he’s in. Veronica, the character’s girlfriend, has one extended scene in the film but manages to make Javi’s work feel alive and vibrant. Hideki participates in a quinceañera for Javi’s cousin and it’s absolutely sweet to see them watch Hideki dance, laugh, and feel for the first time. Language barriers, cultural differences, all melt away until Hideki is so overwhelmed that he breaks down crying. It’s such a sweet scene and places Robles and Hernandez in the spotlight for what I would call the best performances in the film.

Tokyo Cowboy is something that made me feel young again. It’s funny, romantic, charming, and wrapped up in a perhaps too-neat package but that’s its best moment. These are the highlights of a type of film we’ve lost and this is a beautiful way to revisit it.

For a little taste of the film please see the clip below.