Tokyo Taxi Review – A Tender, Overly Sweet Ride Through Memory and Regret

At ninety-four years old, Yōji Yamada is one of Japan’s most enduring filmmakers — and his latest film, Tokyo Taxi, is a testament both to his longevity and to the sentimental streak that has defined much of his late career. This marks his ninety-first feature, and re-teams him with Chieko Baisho, the eighty-four-year-old actress who’s been his muse across decades of filmmaking, particularly in the beloved Tora-san series that once set a Guinness World Record for longest-running film franchise with the same star.

Together, the two veterans deliver a film that feels like an old melody: familiar, a little worn, but still capable of touching the heart. Tokyo Taxi is warm, wistful, and unabashedly sentimental — a cinematic comfort food for older audiences who crave a reminder that nostalgia, when treated with care, still has power. Yet for all its charm and emotional sincerity, it’s also frustratingly predictable, occasionally syrupy, and too cautious to achieve the quiet transcendence of Yamada’s best work.

A Journey Framed by Time and Experience

Premiering as the centerpiece of the Tokyo International Film Festival, Tokyo Taxi finds Yamada at once reflecting on Japan’s postwar transformation and his own cinematic legacy. The story unfolds as a road trip through Tokyo — a literal and metaphorical journey through memory. It’s an adaptation of the 2022 French hit Driving Madeleine, but where that film balanced poignancy with restraint, Yamada’s version leans fully into emotional melodrama.

The premise is deceptively simple. Koji (played by Takuya Kimura, best known for Blade of the Immortal) is a weary taxi driver struggling to support his family. His daughter dreams of attending a prestigious music school — an expense he can’t possibly afford on his modest income. One late morning, after pulling an extra shift, he’s dispatched to pick up an elderly woman in central Tokyo for what seems like a routine fare.

His passenger is Sumire (Chieko Baisho), an elegant 85-year-old woman with sharp eyes and impeccable manners. She’s headed to a seaside retirement home in Yokohama. What begins as an hour-long ride turns into a full-day odyssey when Sumire requests to visit several locations from her past — places tied to her youth, her loves, her regrets, and her survival.

Thus begins a journey that takes them through the heart of Tokyo — from busy shopping districts and quiet side streets to neighborhoods still carrying traces of the city’s postwar scars. As Koji drives and Sumire reminisces, the car becomes a moving confessional, each stop unlocking another fragment of a life that has seen both deep love and deep loss.

Layers of Memory: From Tragedy to Liberation

At first, Sumire appears to be a kind, mildly eccentric old woman simply revisiting her favorite spots. But Yamada soon peels back the surface, revealing a life marked by pain and resilience. Through sepia-toned flashbacks, we see her as a young girl surviving the 1945 firebombing of Tokyo, losing her father amid the chaos. Years later, she falls in love with a Korean-Japanese man (Lee Jun-young), a relationship that ends tragically when he repatriates to North Korea during the postwar exodus, leaving her alone with their child.

These early flashbacks are the most visually striking moments in the film. They capture Tokyo’s transformation with bittersweet clarity — from the rubble of war to the neon glow of modernity — and they anchor Sumire’s memories in the broader story of a nation rebuilding itself.

But the film’s emotional weight truly emerges in its darker second act, when we learn about Sumire’s second marriage — a union to a controlling, violent salaryman (Sakoda Takaya) who dominates her every move. Here, Yamada flirts with genuine darkness. What unfolds is shocking, not because it’s graphic, but because it breaks the movie’s otherwise genteel tone. Sumire’s act of desperation, followed by its moral and emotional consequences, carries a rare gravity. It becomes a quiet but powerful statement about the lack of agency faced by many Japanese women in the postwar years — and the lengths one might go to reclaim freedom.

Yamada’s handling of these sequences is both delicate and revealing. He doesn’t sensationalize Sumire’s suffering, but he also doesn’t look away. Instead, he allows her confession to resonate — a reminder that even the most dignified lives often hide untold traumas.

Performances: Grace and Experience Behind the Wheel

If Tokyo Taxi succeeds as an emotional experience, it’s largely due to its two leads. Chieko Baisho delivers a performance steeped in grace and quiet authority. Every gesture, every pause in her speech, carries decades of lived experience. She embodies Sumire not as a tragic figure but as someone at peace with her contradictions — proud, remorseful, and unafraid to confront her past.

Takuya Kimura, by contrast, plays Koji as the audience’s surrogate: a man stuck in the grind of modern life, skeptical of sentiment, yet gradually disarmed by the vulnerability of his passenger. While Kimura lacks the prickly charm of his French counterpart in Driving Madeleine, his understated warmth provides a steady anchor. You can sense the emotional thaw as the film progresses — the gradual softening of a man who begins to understand that even small acts of empathy can carry immense weight.

Their chemistry is understated but genuine. There’s no forced sentimentality between them, just the natural rapport of two people sharing confined space and unexpected intimacy.

Themes: Nostalgia, Regret, and the Weight of History

Yamada has long been fascinated by the passage of time — how ordinary people carry the burdens of history in their personal lives. Tokyo Taxi continues that tradition, but through a simpler, more sentimental lens. The taxi becomes a vessel of memory, traversing the geography of Tokyo while also charting the emotional terrain of two generations.

The film is, in many ways, about Japan’s collective memory. Each neighborhood, bridge, or seaside view holds meaning beyond Sumire’s story — they’re symbols of postwar endurance, of a society that rebuilt itself but perhaps lost its capacity for tenderness. Through Sumire’s stories, Yamada quietly mourns what Japan has become: a place of efficiency and order, but not always of empathy.

Still, the movie occasionally overstates its emotions. The swelling string music, the tearful monologues, and the predictable life-lesson arc all feel engineered to elicit tears. Yamada’s touch, which was so precise and restrained in films like The Twilight Samurai and The Hidden Blade, here drifts into sentimentality. There are scenes where one wishes he trusted silence more — that he allowed the audience to feel rather than be told what to feel.

A Familiar Destination

As the film nears its conclusion, the emotional trajectory becomes obvious. Koji and Sumire’s day-long trip ends at the retirement home, but by then, it’s clear that the real journey has been one of understanding — for both of them. Koji finds renewed compassion and perspective, while Sumire reaches a quiet reconciliation with her past.

The final scenes are tender, if predictable. A gentle sunset over Yokohama, a lingering smile, a bittersweet farewell. It’s the kind of ending that feels inevitable from the start, yet still manages to land with a soft emotional punch — thanks mostly to Baisho’s dignity and restraint.

The audience may see every turn coming, but it’s hard not to be moved when two actors with nearly two centuries of combined experience share the screen with such serenity.

Comparisons and Context

Critics will inevitably compare Tokyo Taxi to Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days — another film about aging, routine, and quiet reflection set in Tokyo. The contrast is striking. Wenders’ film was meditative, almost ascetic in its simplicity, while Yamada’s is expressive, talkative, and overtly sentimental. Where Perfect Days invites contemplation, Tokyo Taxi guides its audience by the hand, sometimes too firmly.

Still, there’s something comforting about Yamada’s approach. In an era dominated by irony and detachment, his sincerity feels almost radical. His film may be predictable, but it’s also deeply humane — a gentle reminder that even the most ordinary encounters can reveal extraordinary truths about life and loss.

At its best, Tokyo Taxi is a tender meditation on aging, memory, and the enduring need for connection. It’s a film that asks simple questions — What does it mean to look back? How do we make peace with the past? — and answers them with warmth and patience.

At its weakest, it succumbs to the easy sentimentality of a late-career filmmaker too aware of his audience’s expectations. Every emotional beat is underscored by music, every revelation telegraphed long in advance. Yet despite these flaws, there’s something undeniably moving about watching Yamada, at 94, create a film about the passage of time with such conviction.

Tokyo Taxi may not reach the quiet brilliance of The Twilight Samurai or the emotional subtlety of Perfect Days, but it stands as a heartfelt swan song from a master storyteller who still believes in the power of kindness, forgiveness, and memory.