Yoji Yamada’s ‘Tokyo Taxi’ Review

Some kind of record must have been broken in the making of Tokyo Taxi, which not only marks the 91st feature of 94-year-old Japanese director Yōji Yamada, but also something like the 160th screen appearance of the film’s 84-year-old star, Chieko Basho.

To say that these two know what they’re doing would be an understatement. Nor would it be an exaggeration to say that they’re probably used to working together, having teamed up on dozens upon dozens of Tora-san comedy movies made between 1969 and 1995. (Yamada actually set a Guinness World Record when Tora-san became cinema’s longest running franchise featuring the same star — Kiyoshi Atsumi, who died in 1996.)    

The director and Baisho’s century-and-a-half of combined experience is certainly on display in this slick, senior-skewed crowd-pleaser, about a beleaguered cabbie taking an aging passenger on one last ride through her hometown metropolis, during which she reflects on her long and sometimes shocking life. However, all those years behind and in front of the camera don’t prevent — and maybe even contribute to — an extremely sentimental affair that only gets interesting when it goes dark, at which point Yamada’s movie skirts clichés to say something poignant about Japanese society.

Premiering as a centerpiece at the Tokyo Film Festival, where the director also received a lifetime achievement award, the film is a rather faithful remake of the 2022 French hit Driving Madeleine (Une belle course), which featured the same template but with considerable less sappiness. In both movies, you can tell where things are headed from the get-go, although an unexpected twist about midway through gives the journey a needed boost.

The setup has taxi driver Koji (Takuya Kimura, star of Takashi Miike’s Blade of the Immortal), who usually works the night shift, getting called in the late morning for a pickup in town. Unable to afford a fancy music school his daughter hopes to attend, Koji decides to take on the job, rolling up to bring 85-year-old Sumire (Baisho) over to a seaside retirement home in the neighboring city of Yokohama. But what was supposed to be a drive lasting an hour or so turns into a day-long affair when Sumire asks to visit various spots in Tokyo that have marked her long, and, as we soon learn, highly eventful life.

Indeed, Sumire at first seems like a polite if assertive old woman who probably lived a circumspect existence without much drama. We quickly find out that she faced tragedy early on when she lost her father during the 1945 firebombing of Tokyo. Over a decade later she lost her first husband, a dashing Korean Japanese man (Lee Jun-young) who repatriated to North Korea as part of a nationwide exodus, leaving Sumire alone with their child.

As Koji drives his passenger from one spot to another, passing lots of Tokyo landmarks along the way, Yamada cuts in sepia-toned flashbacks showing the major events in Sumire’s life, which Baisho calmly narrates from the backseat. If the loss of a husband and father already feel traumatic enough, viewers will be much more shocked to learn what transpired between Sumire and her second husband: an abusive, domineering salaryman (Sakoda Takaya) who forcied his wife to resort to extreme measures, and then some, so she could free herself from his clutches.

It’s not worth revealing all that happens in those darker sections, which provide the only genuine surprises Tokyo Taxi has to offer. Suffice it to say that the Sumire’s act of vengeance and subsequent retribution offer a telling commentary on the situation of Japanese women in the postwar period, during which they had little social agency and scant legal grounds to ask for a divorce.

The rest of Yamada’s heartfelt if treacly cab ride takes us exactly where we expect it will. Baisho and Kimura showcase good chemistry, although the latter’s character could have used more of an edge. (The French version works better because Parisian taxi drivers are notoriously prickly, whereas Koji is basically a nice guy who lacks patience.) There are a few late moments in the film that are vaguely moving, especially as the two get nearer to Sumiro’s ultimate destination. But the denoument is so foreseeable that it seems longer than it should, delivering a bittersweet ending we all saw coming.

There are times when Tokyo Taxi recalls another aging auteur’s breezy drive around the Japanese capital — Wim Wenders’ sweet and subtly powerful 2023 drama, Perfect Days. And yet the two movies couldn’t be more opposed: Whereas the latter film was so understated it could slip through your hands, Yamada has a tendency to overstate all the emotional beats, with plenty of music cues to help.

The nonagenarian has made some formidable films in his staggeringly prolific career, especially works from the early aughts like The Twilight Samurai and The Hidden Blade. If his latest isn’t up to par with his best, it does offer an earnest refleciton on growing old, looking back and realizing your story is perhaps worth telling to a stranger.