Dead or Alive

In Japan, after a massacre of Japanese and Chinese gangsters, the tough and persistent Detective Jojima (Sho Aikawa) is in charge of the investigations, while dealing with a personal family problem. His daughter needs to be submitted to a surgery and he needs to raise twenty millions yens urgently. He finds that the Chinese descendant Ryuichi (Riki Takeuchi) has associated to a Taiwanese drug dealer and is eliminating the competition. In the end, their confrontation becomes a personal issue for both.

"Dead or Alive: Hanzaicha" is a hypnotically bizarre, insane, sick and violent police story. The fast paced beginning is absolutely crazy, like a video-clip of unexplained violence. Takeshi Miike does not develop well the characters, with the exception of the ambiguous Jojima and the ambitious Ryuichi. He intends to shock the audiences with repulsive scenes, like for example the anal sex with a homosexual and with a dog, almost explicit oral sex, abusive use of drugs, perversions, sadism, drowning in feces and blood shed. The result of this madness is like a modern western-spaghetti, with the death of all characters. I liked this film, but it is only recommended for very specific audiences. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Morrer ou Viver" ("To Die or To Live")

Watch out, this one is not for the squeamish AND those without a sense of humour. The first five minutes are the biggest roller coaster ride I've experienced in a long, long while and left me breathless. What follows is a mix of heroic bloodshed, Yakuza-flics and manga in the flesh. The ending left me laughing way into my eighth drink. Not as creepy as his Audition, but way more fun.

I have no other way to say it: this movie was brilliant! When I saw it last week at the Rotterdam Film Festival, I was completely blown away! And I wasn't the only one... Several other people at the theater actualy gave a (well deserved) standing ovation! This movie was just extraordinary. Not Miiki Takashi's best work (that would be Audition), but certainly one of his most enjoyable and fun flicks! I am amazed that the director is so unknown outside of Japan, because he really is a genius, inventing cinema all over again. He is only in the movie making business for about four years, but already has a body of work that counts no less than 15 movies which are all original and perfect in their own way. In Japan he is well known and is counted to the film avantgarde, but none of his movies really got a wide cinema distribution. Most of his movies are relatively low budget and made for TV, Video or small cinema release. Maybe this gives him the freedom to constantly re-invent himself and push the limit of movie-making in general and perverse, cruel detail in perticular.

Now back to Dead or Alive. The first ten minutes are just breathtaking and eccentric. But after this the movie pulls back into a more conventional Yakuza vs. Cop story, only to go completely over the top at the end. The end effectively blows up every genre convention and just HAS to be seen to be believed.

The basic story is, like I said, quite conventional and simple; a cop tries to solve a case of a group of hitman who have robbed an armored truck. This of course can not be done without getting personally involved and if that wasn't hard enough, he has some grave family trouble too, because his daughter needs an operation which he can not pay. Meanwhile the leader of the killer group is reunited with his younger brother he raised, who does not know anything about his profession. The kid brother tough is destined to choose sides once he finds out that blood money payed for his college education abroad. Meanwhile the band of killers gets involved in a yakuza gang war, fighting over a drug cartel.

The middle part, in which the story unfolds, is shown with very little action and at moments can be compared to the calm style of Takeshi Kitano. But Takashi's signature is always very clear, and there are a lot of small perverse elements that illustrate his tendency to push it to the limit. There is a scene, for example, where a gangster kills a girl by drowning her in a kiddy pool filled with her own poop. But over all the story is told in a very compassionate way, sometimes balancing on the edge of melodrama, but never getting too sentimental because there always is a certain ironic detatchment. Despite this sometimes Kitanoesque detatchment and calm, the movie succeeds in making you really care for and relate to the charakters. I think this really is a big accomplishment. Finally combining this more conventional, 'humane' crime/drama story with the outrageousness of the beginning and the end, and making this combination work, shows how brilliant Takeshi really is. A director that has to be watched carefully!

10 out of 10

On the DVD for Dead or Alive, the first in the trilogy, director Takashi Miike is asked how he would describe the movie to someone who had no idea what it was about, and he describes it as an "enjoyable, healthy Yakuza movie". 'Healthy' is a word I tried to put into context with the film after seeing it, and I'm still not sure how it applies, except maybe in the sense of Miike sticking to a good deal of conventions this time around. It's definitely not that one can't see Miike's mark all over the picture, as it certainly isn't your grandfather's yakuza/crime movie (matter of fact not even John Woo). It's just that with certain elements, like the two main characters: the detective Jojima (Sho Aikawa) who's the decent, hard-nosed sort with the wife and daughter; and Ryuuichi (Riki Takeuchi), who has the face like one of those really crazy villain character actors in 40s film-noir, who wants to take over the mob in the area, by any means necessary. I felt like I could've seen some of this in any given yakuza thriller, albeit my lack of experience with the genre of "V-Cinema" in the 90s or yakuza thrillers in general.

Then again, for Miike he uses a lot of this to spring-board his own visual ideas and real tricks with the material. The way he starts to film is truly and unequivocally disorienting- I had to watch it twice just to sort of, kind of get a sense of what the hell I was watching. It gives the impression, which is both wrong and right with D.O.A., that it'll be a totally knock-your-socks-off work of gonzo film-making, where aberrant sex, brutal violence, drugs, and gangsters will always be lurking in the night (most disturbing is with the scene in the public bathroom, and then following it with the guy on the wheel-spinner being controlled by a guy on a bike). As the story goes into gear, however, this montage usage disappears, and Miike gravitates back into what one recognizes readily from his other films- fairly long takes and deep focus, and outbursts of insanely creative bits of trashy fun (highlights here include a woman who dies via pool of feces, which is actually really sick, a bit involving bestiality out of the blue, and a gigantic shoot-em-up Chinese vs Japanese battle where Ryuuichi and his gang kill both clans in one swift stroke).

Actually, seeing Miike in more genre-familiar territory isn't a bad thing, and sometimes a scene will come up that's meant to play seriously, and does, where in a lesser director would go for the cheap bits with lesser actors. An example of this is the fate of a character's brother, who betrays by taking money not really his and tries to talk his way out of it. So it's actually Miike still experimenting, though it's not a totally fulfilling trip in part because the conventions start to dull up in the middle. It's when Miike finally gets into that last third, with that wildly bloody shoot out- including both hilarious flights of fancy (a thug who was hiding comes out with a sword and goes ape-s*** all over one of the thugs) and the tragic (a character who was a surprise to show up gets killed). The fates grow darker for the detective character, who really was just looking for money somehow for an operation for his daughter. But his allegiance to the law gets put aside, and the "final scene" comes to a head.

Here Miike finally puts his 'wild-man of cinema' gears to full throttle, and it's exciting (as mentioned in trashy, violent, exploitive action-movie ways), ridiculous, and in the end jaw-droppingly funny. It's a good sign of things to come at the end, with the two big stars of V Cinema duking it out as if it's the old West again and the sheriff and outlaw have nothing to lose except for their 'special surprises' up their sleeves at the last bloody gunned down moment. What came before it wasn't all that great overall, and the first in the trilogy, even with a few sweet near X-rated touches of physical and psychological disturbance, doesn't amount to one of Miike's finest triumphs, I wouldn't of traded seeing the last three minutes of the film (final shot included) for anything. 7.5/10

'Dead Or Alive' can't decide what kind of movie it wants to be so it ultimately fails to satisfy on any level. The much discussed sensory overload opening sequence is sensational, and for me, if the whole movie had continued at this level the movie would have been something special. Too quickly the movie slows down to a conventional pace with a rather mundane story of police life vs gang warfare, a story we have seen countless times before but done with more depth and interest. Miike's characters are shallow and impossible to care about. There are a few infamous scenes of violence or degradation which are shocking and memorable, but there aren't enough of these to stop the movie from sinking into seen-it-all-before territory. Some people have likened this to Beat Takeshi's yakuza movies but I fail to see much resemblance. 'Dead Or Alive' has a lot more in common with flashy but empty Japanese thrillers like 'Shark Skin Man and Peach Hip Girl' albeit with a much darker tone, than a complex and meaningful work like 'Hana-bi', which is in a completely different league to this. Added to that a completely bizarre and incongruous ending that belongs in 'Tetsuo 2', and you've got yourself one unclassifiable but unsatisfying movie. Miike has an original and uncompromising approach that's beyond argument, but this time round it just didn't do it for me I'm afraid. 'Dead Or Alive' tries too hard to be different, and doesn't try hard enough to be GOOD.