Vintage Violence is an absurdist crime thriller for phone addicts

Eugene Kotlyarenko’s Vintage Violence blends broad violence and comedy with a formal experiment: the film continually shows what characters are doing on their phones alongside the main action. The movie, which the reviewer saw on day five of the Toronto International Film Festival, centers on Carter (Cole Sprouse), a disgraced influencer in the vein of MrBeast, who discovers a stash of vintage Levi’s while livestreaming and is convinced by a fan, Izumi (Kiko Mizuhara), to go to Tokyo to sell them.

Once in Japan, the plot quickly entangles Carter in widespread scams and yakuza activity, including an enforcer notable for a prosthetic middle finger. The film’s tone has been compared to a restrained — yet still brutal — Takashi Miike picture, trading on extreme moments and a sharp sense of absurdity to propel its crime-thriller beats.

What sets Vintage Violence apart is its on-screen technique: phone displays run constantly alongside the primary footage, showing everything from text threads and livestream chats to the odd detail like someone listening to whale sounds to relax. That layout can be overwhelming — the reviewer describes trying to read a Kick stream chat while an action sequence unfolded — but the cluttered presentation is an intentional part of the film’s design and a commentary on living through our devices. At the time of the review, no trailer had been released.

The reviewer paired Vintage Violence with two other TIFF screenings. A new 4K director’s-cut reissue of Ken Russell’s 1971 film The Devils — rated NC-17 — received praise for its disturbing imagery and restored visuals, and Marie Kreutzer’s Gentle Monster, which follows a family torn apart after police seize a father’s digital devices as part of a CSAM investigation, was noted for Léa Seydoux’s intense lead performance; Gentle Monster is scheduled to open in theaters on October 30 and stream on Netflix starting November 18.