Shinya Tsukamoto Enters Battle in Trailer for English-Language Vietnam Film Mr. Nelson, Did You Kill People?

      With over 50 years in a groundbreaking career, Shinya Tsukamoto has taken on a rare English-language project. In expanding his horizons, one of the leading figures of Japanese cinema—known for directing the Tetsuo: The Iron Man series, A Snake in June, Bullet Ballet, and Tokyo Fist, along with performances in Martin Scorsese’s Silence, Takashi Miike’s Ichi the Killer, and Hideaki Anno’s Shin Godzilla—has successfully crafted a narrative of national importance while maintaining his focus on violence and its repercussions. As the film is set for release in Japan on September 11, the first trailer—filmed in New York, Okinawa, Thailand, and Vietnam—has been unveiled.

      This film, entitled Mr. Nelson, Did You Kill People?, is the concluding part of a war trilogy that includes 2014’s Fires on the Plain and 2023’s Shadow of Fire. According to the director's comments and translated by Google, it addresses “the scars carried by the perpetrator of war.” In this case, it focuses on Allen Nelson, a U.S. soldier whose experience in Vietnam left him with deep psychological trauma, prompting him to travel through Japan to present more than 1,200 lectures on "true war."

      Mark Merphy debuts as the young version of Nelson, while Rodney Hicks (known for his roles in Broadway’s Rent and Come from Away) takes on the role of the older Nelson. Geoffrey Rush plays his VA counselor. The initial preview suggests combat scenes that, despite the film's more serious themes, reflect Tsukamoto's distinctive style—he has expressed that Mr. Nelson is a film that “must be made particularly as the world becomes increasingly unstable.”

      The distributor’s synopsis reads: “The main character is Allen Nelson, an African American man who joined the military at eighteen to escape poverty and discrimination. In the harsh realities of the Vietnam War, he learned just one skill: how to kill as many people as possible. Deprived of independent thought, he executed slaughter on the battlefield without hesitation. The only returns were meager pay and PTSD. Even now, the presence of others, the smell of decay, and the noise of firecrackers provoke distressing memories. Following his eviction and subsequent homelessness at twenty-three, Dr. Daniels, a counselor at a veterans’ hospital, became the person who connected Allen to the world.”

      Watch the trailer below: