Contemporary Japanese comedies generally come in two varieties: wacky and noisy (most films written or directed by Kankuro Kudo), or quirky and dry (Satoshi Miki's "Ten Ten" ["Adrift in Tokyo"] and Yosuke Fujita's "Zen Zen Daijobu" ["Fine, Totally, Fine"]).
Whatever the type, more Japanese comedies try to not only entertain but say something about the present state of society, or such eternal themes as love and hate, good and evil, or, as Keralino Sandorovich's new film "Tsumi toka Batsu toka" states right in the title — crime or punishment.
But wait — shouldn't it be "crime and punishment" (tsumi to batsu), the same as the title of the classic Dostoevski novel about the consequences of murder for the perpetrator's soul? True, but this comedy — one both wacky and noisy, quirky and dry — tosses conventional morality into a blender and hits the "high" button. The movie is not a plunge into an amoral abyss, though it does journey into the surreal, absurd and perhaps, if you take your Ten Commandments seriously, offensive.