Exuberantly unrestrained, it's hard to fault Tampopo for its unevenness when that's part of the point here; a movie stitched together in an almost stream-of-consciousness way, yet always recognizably itself.

Unique and inventive in its cinematography and editing; it feels both cheap and impressively virtuosic at times. Unfortunately, in the end, it’s no more than an unpleasant document of a deranged killing spree. Hardly seems worth the bother.

It's as good an action/sci-fi movie as has ever been made, and on top of it, it's a subversive, complex, yet highly entertaining examination of the cost of social order. It has held up beautifully over the past 15 years, and in retrospect, it's one of the best movies of the 1990s.