In Lee Sang-il’s Scrap Heaven (2005), three strangers are held captive on a commuter bus by a deranged stranger with a gun. In the aftermath of their ordeal, sanitation worker Tetsu (Odagiri Jo) and deskbound police employee Shingo (Kase Ryo) form their own guerilla revenge-for-hire business. The third survivor, one-eyed pharmacist Saki (Kuriyama Chiaki), has her own revenge on society planned.

Lee’s most recent feature Kohuko was an acclaimed and award-winning international hit. In this context it is always interesting to sample a feted filmmaker’s earlier, less well-known works. Scrap Heaven was Lee’s fourth directorial feature, and came before his better known works Hula Girls (2006), Villain (2010), and Unforgiven (2013). It is palpably the work of a less experienced filmmaker: this is scrappy, nihilistic, and wildly adventurous stuff. Lee experiments a lot with camera movement and editing, giving his film a highly energetic and dynamic sensibility. When characters fall, the camera falls with them. When scenes cut from one person to another, it is with a jittery motion akin to a seizure. In one key scene, a character accidentally lets off an explosion – it is powerful enough that the picture shakes so hard you can see the film reel momentarily shear off its sprockets.

Odagiri Jo – typically credited outside Japan as Joe Odagiri – is an energetic and funny central presence. He matches the typically anarchic tone of the film’s first half, and contrasts well against Kase Ryo’s nervous and taciturn junior cop. As a double act they are excellent, and their revenge-oriented hijinks during the film’s earlier scenes a good source of bleak, scabrous comedy.

Emoto Akira, who is something of a cult figure in Japanese cinema, makes a dogged and weary appearance as police detective Yabuta. He is a welcome addition to the film.

It is in Scrap Heaven‘s later scenes, heralded by the return of pharmacist Saki from the film’s opening act, where the film takes a marked tonal shift and becomes a much darker and more serious work. It does not quite convince, although it represents some bold storytelling by Lee and is likely the braver creative choice than continuing with the earlier, more comedic sequences. Scrap Heaven is regularly compared to David Fincher’s 1999 comedy-thriller Fight Club, and it is a resemblance one can easily see. There is also a risk to give too much emphasis on the influence Fincher’s film (and Chuck Palahniuk’s original novel) has had here. Scrap Heaven feels part of an ongoing dialogue of lower-budget, scrappy independent drama in Japan that has enjoyed its own domestic influences without relying too much on American imports.

Winning performances and some inventive direction make for an entertaining mix, but do not completely overcome the unintentionally wobbly tone or the inconsistent quality of Lee Sang-il’s screenplay. His later film tower over Scrap Heaven in terms of technical and creative accomplishment, but it is a fascinating exercise to see where some of his immense later talents may have originally formed.