Wonderfully offbeat film!

Don't listen to the negative reviews

it is the rare 'crazy' movie that actually has something to say.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

'Map of the Sounds of Tokyo' is no Thriller. It's more of a slow drama centering on the young Ryu, that lives a lonely and silent life in the chaos of Tokyo. She spends her nights working on a fish market while from time to time hanging out with another lonely old guy. Her routine is only broken by the casual killings that she performs, though those things never become the center of the story. Parallel to Ryu we see how the suicide of some girl in the town leaves her father grieving and broken, which is why his subordinate orders Ryu to kill the dead girl's boyfriend David from Spain. In slow pictures we follow all those connected persons through their daily lives dealing with loneliness and grief. We often hear only the sounds of the city and silence from the protagonists, which helps to understand how lost they all are in this big world. You will not find the good or the bad guy in this piece. Most of the times the atmosphere is rather depressing with only a few glimpses of sunshine here and there, especially when Asian and European culture are opposing each other. I would compare the general feeling and vibe of the movie with Amélie, though the latter one leaves you at least with a smile and some hope at the end.For me, the key to the movie seems to be that no matter where you are from or what you are doing for a living, we all want and need another person in our life. And also how easy it is to be alone in such a big city full of people like Toyko. And while I like the movie's depth and slowness, it is kind of hard to connect with any of the protagonists. No one is really likable and often they seem so passive about their situations.Just how life, the movie is not perfect. But it may help you to slow down in this fast and loud world for a little time to value the people around you.

Ryu is a contract killer who makes her living shooting people in Tokyo, and whose only friend is a guy she meets at the ramen museum in Yokohama. Meanwhile, David is a Spanish guy running a wine shop in Tokyo whose girlfriend kills herself. When his dead girlfriend's family then hires Ryu to kill him, the two instead begin a torrid love affair.None of these things are spoilers - all this happens in the first act of the film.If this already makes no sense, congrats - you've got this movie pegged. It's been a while since I've seen a serious film with characters who make such nonsensical decisions and whose actions seem to have all the consequences of a superhero movie. For example, the police don't even seem to investigate Ryu's many murders, despite the fact that she seems to be responsible for nearly all of Japan's gun homicides (they get about 10 total per year - that's not a typo - and she's responsible for at least three within the span of a few months).The film is just not believable on any level. Tokyo itself is miscast - I never take film titles literally, but this one borders on false advertising. There are plenty of gratuitous cityscape shots to remind us where we are, and occasionally people speaking Japanese (not often enough considering it's, you know, Tokyo), but otherwise there is nothing uniquely of that city in the film and plenty that is completely out of character for it. There is no "map" here, and the only sound I found recognizable from Tokyo (a city that's a cacophony of unique sounds) was the slurping of ramen.In fact, at times I felt much the same way about this film as I did about "Lost in Translation" - it often feels like a travelogue from somebody who has missed the point. Tokyo is depicted as a slow, dead city, filled with English speakers, western tourists eating sushi off of naked women, gun crime, and depressed residents who eat ramen all the time and go to love hotels and karaoke bars not to have fun, but to wallow in their misery. I understand contrarian filmmaking and it can be interesting to see a film that illuminates the dark side of a place, but western filmmakers *always* seem to try to show this side of Tokyo - it's no longer contrarian (if it ever really was), it's a common theme that's just plain wrong. At this point, it would be contrarian to show Tokyo as it is for most people - a loud, energetic and fast-paced city. Heck, "Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift" gets it better than this film does.The main characters are both unsympathetic. At best, Ryu is a cold- blooded murderer, and no backstory is ever given to try to soften that. A narrator (her ramen friend) literally pleads with us throughout the film to feel sympathy for her, but he also tells us right from the start that he can't offer an explanation for who she is or what she does. David, meanwhile, is just a jerk - the night after his girlfriend commits suicide, he attempts to pick up Ryu in his wine shop, and almost never says a kind word to her after that (he doesn't know who she really is, so he thinks she's just some random pickup). She inexplicably seems drawn to him.It would help if David wasn't miscast as well. Now, I don't mean any personal offense to Sergi Lopez and I am not too familiar with his other work, but given his character's jerk-ish personality it just strains credulity that a much younger woman (much less two of them) would be so sexually drawn to this doughy middle aged man, and in fact the sex scenes are borderline embarrassing to watch. David's character really needed to be a Johnny Depp type in order to work - a westerner you could really see women falling for no matter what, who could get away with saying hurtful things and still sound suave doing it.About the only redeeming quality in the film is Rinko Kikuchi, who does her best with what she's given. She makes it clear that Ryu's a tortured soul despite not having many spoken lines and a script that inexplicably goes out of its way not to tell us why. The script works against her, but she almost manages to make Ryu sympathetic completely on her own. That's no small accomplishment.I won't give away the second and third acts but suffice to say they are in keeping with the rest of the film. It never makes sense.

Well, what can I say? I am Spanish and I am a little familiarized with Japan and Japanese culture, my girlfriend is a Japanese girl living in Tokyo and I have visited the city. In my humble opinion, the portrait of Tokyo in this movie could be one of its limited virtues because at least is trying to show a different point of view focused not only on the typical tourist pictures but also on some not so glamorous places as small restaurants of ramen, a cemetery or a market for selling fish. Soundtrack is interesting and well chosen too, and nothing to complain about photography of the French Jean-Claude Larrieu. About Isabel Coixet, her work as a director is competent and even it has a "touch" more Japanese than Spanish (more concentrated on the silences or natural sounds than the dialogs or artificial noises, for example).Until here the positive. Now the not so positive, always in my opinion. First, the story. A professional killer falling in love with his (her) victim and breaking his (her) own rules with bad consequences. How many times we have watched this kind of story in a movie? Too many times, I think. Second (and specially), the main actor. Sergi López. He is a respected actor here in Spain, but sorry, to choose him as the man able to light some fire in the cold heart of Ryu is one of the biggest mistakes I have seen in a casting for a movie. Sergi López, let's be honest, is not tall, not sophisticated, too old for Ryu and also scandalously fat for this kind of character. He is not charming, his face is the face of a farmer or a boxer and his voice is annoying in its vulgarity.Again, sorry Sergi López, but nobody can believe that a very young Japanese girl can kill herself because of you, and also another young girl can fall in love with you until the extreme to risk her own life. Everything in only one month. Wow, are you some kind of Spanish chubby Bond with a special skill for melting Japanese girls? Isabel Coixet is a woman, and it's supposed a clever one. Does she believe the script? I don't believe it! And sorry sorry, even I can't believe López managing a wine shop for gourmet clients in Tokyo.

Well, I went to see this movie yesterday and it was not what I was expecting. Does that means it was worse than I imagined? At all, it just means it was different.Coixet portrays a different perspective of Tokyo where the city becomes just an excuse to show the loneliness of its two protagonists, who are literally lost in a decaying world and don't know how to get out of it. Ryu, the Japanese girl, is an assassin who gets paid for its job, and David is an Spanish living in Tokyo, who has lost his wife recently and feels his life has nothing but emptiness. Both found themselves alone and feel they need each other, but things are not easy and there are some scars that will never be healed.This is NOT "Lost in Translation" and this is NOT about Tokyo but about human feelings. If you want to see a more realistic movie about Japanese culture and you think you might like this movie because you're a fan of everything related to it, you might be very disappointed. If you go there with no expectations and you just want to get immersed by its story, I'm sure you'll enjoy it.That being said, it contains very explicit sex scenes, so be careful little children. I don't think it's a movie any kid would like to see or appreciate, anyways.