Throughout much of one-man-band director Shinya Tsukamoto’s solemn trauma drama Mr. Nelson, Did You Kill People?, viewers outside of Japan may be asking themselves a different question than the one posed by the title: “Why,” they might wonder, “did a Japanese filmmaker known for cultish genre flicks like Tetsuo: The Iron Man and Tokyo Fist decide to make a movie about an African American U.S. Marine wrecked by his experience during the Vietnam War?”
It takes most of the film for us to learn the answer, which is in fact rather simple and is definitely not a spoiler: The script was adapted from the titular nonfiction account of Allen Nelson, a Vietnam vet who managed to overcome severe PTSD and eventually became a popular speaker in Japan, giving over 1,200 talks about the brutalities he committed during his tours of duty in Nam. In his director’s statement, Tsukamoto explains that he attended one of those lectures, which exposed him to the horrors of war and changed his outlook on violence.
Mr. Nelson, Did You Kill People?
The Bottom Line
Powerful in spots, but desperately lacking subtlety.
