Kikoku

Yakuza Demon is probably Takashi Miike most normal movie ever made. No sudden, bizarre $#!+. No necrophilia. No butt sex. Just a normal everyday Yakuza movie. Wowsers! So is it good? Yup. Riki was awesome as usual, the action was bloody and fun and the story was well told but not really anything special. I liked Yakuza Demon but it is far from Miike's best because it doesn't have his signature weird ass crap so blow me.

Yakuza films is a tradition in the japanese crime film history, you can't deal without it. This one directed by Miike Takashi is surprisingly less weird, less crazy than the other movies from this director. I could prefer the old Kinji Fukasaku - or simply the seventies films - because the tone, style, acting, is quite different. However the result is above average. Good, strong performances...Excellent ending. I have always liked this film, bleak, gritty, a good paced action crime yarn. Don't look for something too surprising in terms of story telling, it remains rather predictable. Some poignant scenes, however.

Takashi Miike has mostly made a career out of taking genre films and subverting them, by skewing, lampooning, exaggerating or thwarting their conventions. A goodly number of these films have been takes on the Yakuza genre, with the most famous being DEAD OR ALIVE - a punk rock Yakuza film that seems to pour scorn on the derivative nature of the genre. With KIKOKU he perhaps delivers the ultimate twist, by taking a story pretty similar to DEAD OR ALIVE (or DEADLY OUTLAW REKKA) and... filming it straight. Where his earlier films find new ways to approach their genre, or new stylistic techniques, KIKOKU plays pretty much like you'd expect any Yakuza film to do. The patented "Miike moments" are almost wholly absent. Is this a post-modern mockery, a parody of his own style, or could he just not be bothered anymore? Riki Takeuchi, man of 1000 grimaces, plays a Yakuza foot-soldier in a small gang, whose loyalty to his boss leads him to go on a seemingly suicidal mission of vengeance against a much larger rival gang. His initial successes cause such a commotion that his own group disown him & his boss to make peace, so then he is trapped in the middle of the two sides. Yes, it's a familiar tale :) Tom Mes suggests in the film notes that KIKOKU may be Miike's way of saying "goodbye" to the Yakuza genre... perhaps he's mined it as deep as it can go, and wants to move on to fresher things, so as his way of achieving closure he decided to make one last Yakuza film but do it in a respectful way. I don't know if there's any truth - his next film was GOZU after all, which is a Yakuza film at heart, but twisted into possibly the strangest form Miike has given it yet. Since then we've had a couple of horror films (the dire ONE MISSED CALL and his segment of THREE: EXTREMES), a Tokkusatsu film (ZEBRAMAN) and the bizarre sounding IZO which I'm really anticipating. But somehow I doubt Miike will be staying away from his Yakuza roots for all that long - I just hope his next Yakuza film is more creative than this one.

5/10

Underrated Yakuza Flick from Miiiiiike!

It might not have the production values or flash bs that some crime movies have but this is so well done. The atmosphere, the acting, the directing, all wonderfully game. If you like gangster flicks or movies from Japan check this one out, it doesn't get enough love!

This movie is a story of a small Yakuza gang who's boss finds himself in trouble after a money dispute with the other bosses in his crime family. After a rival family declares war on them, the boss soon finds himself in jail and under scrutiny. His two remaining underlings decide to advance their fledgling group in the family by destroying the rival society themselves, thus endangering their own outnumbered organization and alienating themselves from it.

This was kind of an average gangster movie from Miike. There's nothing wrong with it, but there's nothing special about it either. It's very similar in feel to "Graveyard of Honor", but without the big message or depressive feel. For straight-to-video, it looks great. The blood and violence is not off-the-charts, but it is there. There are no big shocker parts or bizarre concepts like you might expect from this director.

Look for a surprise alternate ending after the credits.