13 Assassins - 2010 - Dir. Miike

I'm so biased towards this movie that it's painful. Samurai? Miike? Yakusho? That's it. There we go. Yes, I would like to see this action movie please. The movie is basically setting up the huge forty or so minute set piece at the end. We get to know our awful motherfucking antagonist. The Badasses that are going to kill his ass. And then them planning on how to do it. Even then... when it happens... there are still tons of surprises that make you say "GODDAMN IT, YEAH!" It's just a really well put together action movie. I am so impressed with Miike. That guy has a lot of range. Sure... it's generally a pretty violent range, but he feel fleshes out of the spectrum of violent movies. And Yakusho... perhaps not typically cast as an "Assassin," he still plays the Leader of the Pack with APLOMB. The man gets so passionate about the assassination that he cries a little at the thought of it! Yakusho is also so good at bringing silence or a quietness to a role. He's an excellent contrast to Miike bombastic style. And when the film explodes by the third act... it feels good. Naritsugu is a great antagonist. A complete sonuvabitch. And I can't help but like a bad guy who gets overly philosophical about all the awful shit that he does. So, yeah, it's just a really tightly made movie about some samurai killing a real dick.

I'm Koji Yakusho and I'm gonna FUCK YOU UP!

Graveyard of Honor - 2002 - Dir. Miike

A Miike remake of a Fukasaku film seems like an appropriate enough thing to exist. The two men certainly have their similarities. Although, let's not fool ourselves, this is a Miike movie. It is unendingly violent, loud, and strangely enough slow and boring. The man just seems to want to show us someone who can't not hurt people all the time. So, you know, we're never really rooting for the guy. We're just waiting for him to hit the wall. And good god, does it take forever... more than two hours of this jackass screaming and doing insane shit, getting fucked up on drugs. There's an arc of a kind. But the film is like a Punch and Judy show, where the character is a vehicle for violence and that is kind of the long and the short of it. We don't really get many insights into why or even a goofy quirk (like say Ichi the Killer might throw that our way). We're just dealing with a violent dude in a violent movie. This isn't Miike at his strongest. It's not his worst. There's some fun sequences... but they can be pretty far apart. Pretty, pretty far apart. So, I dunno. If you wanna watch a lot of fighting and blood and screaming (that actually sounds more appealing then the movie is), check it out. I think you could do better though.

Guys! I'm Batmmmaaaaaann?

Gozu - 2003 - Dir. Miike

One of my long forgotten (as much as one could forget a film like Gozu) film loves, I unearthed Gozu as an attempt to explain my tastes at a certain point in my life. MAN! I feel like as much as I remembered about this film, I forgot all kinds of things (ie. soup ladle). Slowly, as I watched the film, it all seeped back. Apparently, the film has a lot like Miike, being unsupervised on such a low budget film, running wild. I'm hesitant to believe all the stories but things like improvised scenes and giving the writer only a week to write it give the movie a neat little touch. It is unflinchingly outrageous, but doesn't always feel like its trying to be shocking like Miike's Visitor Q. The film flowed much faster than I remember it. In fact, in retrospect, it probably moves a lot faster than Miike's shorter films. Impressive considering it's two-hour plus (barely) length and what I feel is films like this tendencies to drag. It does have a very satisfying feelings of having traveled a very long way. As the film ends, I remember how it begins and am surprised to have been watching the same movie. Although, I do think perhaps the film could have been edited quite a bit. I'm rather surprised at the films length considering how... well... unnecessary some scenes are. But the films has a distinct feel, and I wouldn't want to touch it.

High five!

Osaka Tough Guys - 1995 - Dir. Miike

Osaka Tough Guys is perhaps the earliest Miike that I've even seen. In fact, as far as Miike is concerned, you don't get too much earlier than that! It's a pretty outright silly movie. I mean, most of Miike is silly but this was almost completely silly. There's some fighting but none of the gore that would become synonymous with Takashi Miike, instead, we get the silliness that made so much of his violence palatable. In fact, there's a lot in this film that kind of pre-empts his later stuff. There's clearly a big sense of fun and cartoonish sensibility that he manages to water down in his later work. No one with much of a name in the flick, at least, no one that I could really pin down. The two lead actors are ridiculous though. They're a ton of fun to watch, gleefully running about being morons. I mean, it's like a Miike movie where you can enjoy his goofiness without the fear of seeing something pierced, ripped open, or hung by hooks. It's not a great movie by any means. Following two delinquents who accidentally and against their will become Yakuza and then they just dick around being Yakuza. There's definitely a throughline in the film but I wouldn't call it PLOT HEAVY by any means. The film ends in ridiculousness with an explosion of dynamite and a bug-eyed tongue sticking out CG face. Also, I must admit in enjoying the performance of the third shitty Yakuza recuit. A possibly retarded college student who is just really a big doof. A fun movie. If you like Miike for more than violence. Definitely check it out.

The only picture I could find from Osaka Tough Guys... Yeah, it's Miike, all right.