Tokyo Cowboy (c) Purdie Distribution
Film: Tokyo Cowboy
In Cinemas
Having a very limited roll-out in arthouse cinemas, Marc Marriott’s Tokyo Cowboy is a charming and simple story, less about a stranger in a strange world and more about a lost soul finding his purpose. Hideki (Arata Iura) is a business strategist in Japan who sees potential in organizations that seem like lost causes to others. When his company decides to sell off an unprofitable cattle ranch in Montana in their holdings, Hideki intervenes and says they could use the ranch to start a Wagyu business in America. On a short leash by his boss Keiko (Ayako Fujitani), who is also his longtime girlfriend, he travels to Montana with a Wagyu expert and English translator Wada (Jun Kunimura) to start the conversion. However, when they get there, the ranchers, including former owner Peg (Robin Weigert) see no viability to this plan as they would need corn to make this work, and the land will not support crops. With Wada conveniently leaving the story (in a fun way), Hideki has to fumble forward with Google Translate, trying to find a way to make his plan work. But he keeps doing everything wrong, including the clothes he wears, the car he rents and his uptight work ethic. Only when he finds an unlikely alliance with a Mexican ranch worker Javier (Goya Robles), who is also an outsider to the all-white ranch, does Hideki learn to fit in. Although nothing in the actual plot is at all surprising, there are so many little delightful moments of truth and human observation that you forgive the familiarity of the story. If you don’t think Hideki (and his perfect suit) will end up at least once in the mud, you haven’t seen movies like Doc Hollywood or even Cars and their ilk. The cast sells the story impeccably, from the likeable Arata Iura as Hideki all the way down to Scout Smith as the front desk worker at the motel, who serendipitously is learning Japanese and loves watching anime. Marriot has said he came up with this story after his own experience working in Japan, and he is equally fond of and critical of the unwavering characteristics of both the American and the Japanese. And he even has a diversion into the Mexican American world in a wonderful scene at Javier’s niece’s quinceaňera. Tokyo Cowboy is a generous and life-affirming family film (racism is almost nil) that teaches the most important lesson us humans have the hardest time to learn: empathy.
