Rainy Dog

Miike strays off the beaten path to do his own take on 'film-noir' (a tribute to Melville?): limited dialog, moody settings, and deliberately slow development all make for a unique movie in Miike's immense filmography.

As surprising for its subtlety, pace, and precision as for its lack of the standard Miike moments, it is definitely not the director's best (for that see "The Bird People of China", "Ichi the Killer" or "Gozu"), but a great movie for a rainy Sunday afternoon, naturally if you don't mind the occasional yakuza violence.

Could be read as the director's attempt at a character study (usually absent from his work) or an exercise in cinematic economy - in either case it is a movie well-above mediocrity, yet not quite reaching the level of masterpiece.

The same day as watching Shinjuku Triad Society I continued with this one. It was a Japanese film special and I didn't read any background info before the movie whatsoever, but after STS (and Kuroshiya Ichi a month before) I decided to give a miss to all Miike films. Luckily I did not know this was Miike.

This was really a surprise noir after the no substance of the previous mentioned. A yakuza goes to Taiwan and works as a hit-man when suddenly his son is dumped upon him, a son he didn't know he had and doesn't want to have either. I don't want to give away much but the movie is dense with atmosphere and humour, it's easily his best alongside Audition, Birdpeople of China and The Negotiator. Akin for Takeshi Kitano, but definitely Miike.

One of the first Takashi Miike movies I ever saw was 'Dead Or Alive' and shocked me because it didn't play by "the rules", adding unexpected surreal touches to the violent yakuza thriller genre. I reacted very negatively to the movie at the time, but I subsequently grew to admire it the more I got into Miike's groove. Now that I'm familiar with Miike's more extreme movies like 'Ichi The Killer' and 'Visitor Q' I'm prepared for just about anything, but I was once again a bit nonplussed the first time I watched 'Rainy Dog'. Not because it was outrageous, but because it wasn't. 'Rainy Dog' is nothing like Miike's other early yakuza movies like 'Fudoh: The New Generation' and 'Full Metal Yazuza'. Anyone expecting the ultra-violent action and crazy humour of those two will be disappointed. Instead 'Rainy Dog' is a slow, atmospheric character study, very serious and dark in tone. Miike regular Sho Aikawa plays Yuuji a low level hit man exiled in Tawain. Yuuji is depressed from the relentless rain and becoming increasingly alienated. He sees no reason to his monotonous existence. One day a former lover (his wife?) turns up with a young boy (his child? It's not clear) who she dumps. Yuuji ignores the child who camps outside his flat and tags along on his hits. The boy seems to slowly humanize him, as does a prostitute he becomes involved with, but perhaps it is too late. Yuuji's life of violence is about to catch up with him. Miike makes great use of the rain soaked locations, and the movie is interesting for the fact that apart from Aikawa and another one of his regular actors Tomorowo Taguchi the cast is Tawainese and much of the dialogue is in Mandarin. The soundtrack regularly features a Ry Cooder-like slide guitar, and overall the movie has more in common with Takeshi Kitano's yakuza movies that Miike's. 'Rainy Dog' isn't one of Miike's most outrageous movies but it's still recommended and shows a more thoughtful side to this amazing director.

The story centres on a failed yakuza that has been exiled to Taiwan and now provides a hit man service for local gang leaders. The backdrop is a rainy Taipei which throughout the film is hated by all of the main characters and is seemingly impossible to escape from (Interesting from a Japanese film maker). The hit man, Yuuji, (Sho Aikawa) has his life turned upside down by the arrival of his supposed son who is cast off by his mother, a woman Yuuji doesn't remember in any detail. Eventually paired up with a prostitute he meets along the way they are offered an escape from the lives they appear to hate. The story is brilliantly told both through a cinematography and script. The locations and indeed the weather play an important role in setting a mood and reflecting the troubled lives of the main characters. Yuuji and chen, Yuuji's son, (Played by Lianmei Chen) work together brilliantly. Chen is a mute but the thoughtful and pragmatic performance by Lianmei Chen means this does not hinder the empathy you can feel for the character. Sho Aikawa, although he has most of the screen time and very little script, plays Yuuji to perfection. This film is another example of why Miike is well respected as a film maker. The usual blood and revenge storyline is there, but with a plot that you need to see played out in full and characters who you care for throughout. It is an excellent example of how a film should be made to incorporate gripping drama into an ultra violent gangster movie. I would recommend anyone to watch Rainy Dog, it may not be typical Mike but it is defiantly Miike Gold.

Rainy Dog will no doubt come as a big surprise to many casual viewers of the work of Takashi Miike; featuring none of the over-the-top violence, sadism and hyper-kinetic surrealism of his more iconic pictures, such as Ichi the Killer, The Happiness of the Katakuris, Gozu and Dead or Alive.

Instead, Rainy Dog is an incredibly bleak, brooding, deliberately paced and entirely authentic gangster drama; focusing on the well-worn themes of love, life, family, responsibility, honour and retribution. The films tells the story of Yuuji; an exiled Japanese Yakuza living hand to mouth in a Taiwanese slum, trying to make ends meat by carrying out various hits for the local Triads so that he can afford to buy a fake passport to get him self back to Japan. If this wasn't difficult enough, his life is further complicated by the arrival of a small boy, who is literally dumped on Yuuji's doorstep and introduced as his son. This forces our central protagonist to think more specifically about his life and future; as his purgatory-like existence in this neon-lit jungle hell - plagued by constant rain and bursts of matter-of-fact violence - threatens a single fate of bloody retribution.

As the previous reviewer noted, the film is probably closer in tone to the work of someone like "Beat" Takeshi Kitano, with the deliberate pacing of the narrative and preoccupations with character and tone really carrying the film above the more dramatic moments of action. That said, the film is hardly an anomaly within Miike's rich back-catalogue of works; suggesting the quiet, almost serene moments of films like The Bird People in China, Ley Lines and indeed, the first hour of his masterpiece Audition.

It's wrong to think of Miike as a shallow provocateur; desperately trying to shock the viewer with more and more outlandish moments from film to film. Simply put; the man is a serious talent... as comfortable with straight crime dramas like Shinjuku Triad Society, Agitator and the film in question, as he is with more personal, idiosyncratic projects like Visitor Q, Gozu and The Happiness of the Katakuris. Rainy Dog might not be the film that I watch again and again - lacking the sheer audacity and room for multiple interpretations offered by the latter collection of films - but at the same time, it adds a great deal of depth to Miike's reputation as a highly skilled and highly talented filmmaker away from all the shock-value and occasional lapses of self-parody.

Rainy Dog is dark, moody, uncompromising film-noir at its finest; all wonderfully atmospheric, nicely shot and subtly acted (particularly by the three main leads who come to take on the personification of the "family" central to the thoughts and feelings of the main character). True, it may not be the greatest film that Miike has ever made, or indeed, one that is indicative of his trademark style, but it is, regardless, one that remains an enjoyable if somewhat slow-moving crime drama that shows Miike's capability of working with a variety of different acting styles (from child to adult, domestic to foreign, professional to amateur), whilst simultaneously placing further emphasis on the idea of character, rather than spectacle.