Dead or Alive

After seeing "Oodishon" and "Koroshiya-1," I became an instant fan of Miike Takashi's filmmaking style. His ability to present what would be in the hands of another director a hacknyed and familiar story is nothing short of brilliant. He takes old formulas and infuses them with new life, sometimes through shock value, confusion, humor, and actually brilliant filmmaking. His visuals are always incredible, where even the most mundane shot looks like a great photograph, proving that Miike has a great eye. So here we have "Dead or Alive: Hanzaisha," the first in what would become one of the most controversial and bizarre trilogies in film history. It has relatively good acting, and a great ensemble cast, including two of my favorite Japanese actors (besides Takeuchi and Aikawa, there's Terajima Susumu and Osugi Ren, both alumni of Kitano "Beat" Takeshi's films). Make no mistake, this is not your run-of-the-mill action/drama movie.

The overall story has been done, basically the cop vs. criminal motif. Ryuichi (Takeuchi Riki) heads a small group of misfits who were once Chinese war orphans. Having no place either in the Chinese Triads or the Japanese Yakuza, they wage their own little streetwar against both sides. Detective Jojima (Aikawa Sho) is hot on their trail, but he has problems of his own. He knows his wife is cheating on him and their daughter is dying and he can not afford the operation needed to save her life. It sounds like something out of a John Woo movie, right? Something akin to "Hard Boiled" or "The Killer," but whereas John Woo presents violence in an operatic sense, Miike shows us something more hip and gritty.

The beginning sequence of the film is a montage of everything from gay sex in a bathroom, to snorting 18-foot lines of cocaine, to strippers, to arterial spray, to gluttony, to...pretty much every deadly sin out there. Is it shocking, not particularly (at least not to me), but the MTV-style editing full of fast cuts, sexual imagery, and bright colors gives it a burst of adrenaline that is just a counterbalance to what becomes a very slow and quiet film for the most part. The main plot of the movie is presented in a style similar to Kitano "Beat" Takeshi, with long shots and conversations between characters, with only the most shocking acts of depravity made unshocking by the characters' reactions. There is a scene where Aikawa talks to an informant who is setting up to film a bestiality scene, and his reaction is...almost nonexistent. Or the Yakuza's reaction to their boss drowning a girl in a kiddie pool full of her own feces. It should be shocking and disgusting (and it is), but the shock is diminished by the banality of it. It's as if Miike is playing with the audience, testing our limits and asking us to question what we find acceptable. If another director presented these acts, he or she might show it as if to glamorize it, to overemphasize its putridity. Miike...just shows it as if it's normal, and while some will be offended by this, he has often made the claim that he just wants to get a reaction. And one way or the other, he does. This is the point of the ending, which for awhile matches the ultrahip attitude of the beginning before delving into territory best left to fantasy films. But again, Miike has given us a surprise that is both shocking...and somehow expected because it's unexpected.

The best way to explain this is that line from the movie "Se7en," when Morgan Freeman says to Brad Pitt, "If John Doe's head opens and a UFO flies out, I want you to have expected it." This perfectly describes "Dead or Alive: Hanzaisha" and Miike's style. If it's a Miike film, you're going to see things that are unexpected and even offensive, but because it's Miike, you almost DO expect it, and it almost DOES make a strange sense. Again, he's playing with the audience. Do we really know what we want? Do we really know what to expect? No...and that is Miike's strength. So what if it breaks all the rules of good plot and storytelling, so what if it breaks all the rules of good filmmaking? It's Miike, and it's his formula in full swing. "Dead or Alive: Hanzaisha" is pretty much the epitome of Miike's brand of filmmaking.

Takashi Miike's Dead or Alive (1999) begins perhaps as strikingly as ever possible. The very first 5 minutes of this film are incredibly fast paced and edited series of brutal and unexplained (yet) Yakuza murders and images from one sleazy night club in which this mayhem mostly takes place. After that, the speed slows down remarkably and the rest of the film reminds me pretty much of the great art of Takeshi Kitano, another Japanese cinema master. Dead or Alive tells the story of two men against each other, one policeman who has to do dirty things with Yakuza in order to get money for his daughter's expensive medical treatment (she has some dangerous and lethal disease) and the other a charismatic Yakuza criminal and these two men are little like Danny Lee and Chow Yun Fat in John Woo's The Killer; Both these men are on the different sides of the law but share many similar traits and thus respect each other. At the film's finale, which is again extremely over-the-top insanity, they finally confront and it is again something as hysterical that can be invented only by this Japanese director or some other from the East. Dead or Alive's beginning and ending are as fast and outrageous as possible and the middle part of the film is very slow and calm. This creates an extremely effective contrast to the film and reminds me very much of Miike's masterpiece, Fudoh from 1996.

Dead or Alive includes many memorable characters which are from sick pervert Yakuzas (who like to drown people into feces etc.) to junkies and university fellows which all are interesting and personal in the hands of this director. The film tells about many sides of humanity and about things we don't usually want to discuss or at least films don't usually discuss! The most important element in the film however is the finale which thickens it all. The conclusion of this ultra original Yakuza drama is exactly the same as Fudoh's whole point, which is that in the human nature and psyche, there is this thing which necessarily doesn't make it impossible to categorize humans as brutes and savages as it all is destructed because of these reasons in Dead or Alive. Enemies cannot stop until it's too late, and nobody is willing to "give up." Man kills man and acts only more "sophisticatedly" than the actual animals and wild beasts of nature. This is very usual topic in Japanese, honest, cinema and it is one thing which usually makes their movies so unique and brilliant.

The finale in Dead or Alive includes things which are not likely to be imagined especially when the whole film before it (excluding the beginning, of course) was so calm and almost peaceful. The finale is very easy to take seriously as it's meant to be as Miike only says his things with different methods, with the methods of this magic filled form of art. When people don't like elements like these in movies, I think it's because of the fact that they don't want to / cannot accept all the possibilities of this art and thus cannot deal with such imagery and elements in films. It all has to be interpreted in order to understand what film maker has to say and give with his/her film. Miike has said he wants that the viewer can be entertained at the same time, but I'm extremely happy that Miike still keeps these entertainment efforts on the background and things in his films which are meant to be entertaining, are also very personal and tolerable and never calculated as in some Hollywood mainstream effort of nowadays'.

Dead or Alive is no less cinematically stunning as Miike's other films. This includes fine use of photography and long shots without edits. The editing is also great especially in this first 5 minutes when the mayhem is so fierce. It all is done with skill and the fast edits never become irritating as they have been finished with care and interest. The often cartoonish violence is somewhat brutal at times and definitely the most graphic elements of this film will alienate most casual viewers as some of the characters and the acts they commit are very sick and repulsive. When a film is this symbolic and almost surreal, the violence doesn't have to be realistic or "believable" either as it is too symbolic and one element in the film. I think Dead or Alive isn't gratuitously violent or sadistic as it all serves the morality of the characters and the world this film depicts.

Dead or Alive isn't quite as great as Fudoh, but still extremely pleasant film from Takashi Miike, who makes films at incredible speed. He makes some 5 or more films per year and most of them are equally personal and inventively wild and mad. I hope this man can continue his "freedom" as a film maker and that he'd never go to mainstream (not to speak of Hollywood!) and fortunately his statements so far don't show signs about this. 9/10

Hey this wasn't bad at all. I expected shocking violence and gory thrills, based on the film's reputation, but what I got instead was a thinking, feeling, bizarrely creative film. This was my first Takashi Miike film, and my expectations were low, partly because he's so hyped, and partly because I'm over being shocked, and his films have a reputation of being, well, shocking. The character of the cop is especially palpable, and the scenes that take place in his home are more like the quiet moments of a Beat Takeshi film. This dramatic realism is somehow anchored in the otherwise chaotic flow of the rest of the film. There's a real anything-can-happen vibe to this film that keeps you on the edge, yet when you reflect back upon it, there are really only a few heavy action sequences. I thought that was pretty brilliant, though some may feel disappointed by the low count of flipped cars. Hey wanna see an action film? See Formula 51; that had plenty of action, with no damn reason for any of it. And what a forgettable film that was. Dead or Alive is rollicking and at times inexplicable, but never boring. Highly recommended.

'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.

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.