Gokudô daisensô

As usual, Takashi Miike – director of "Audition", "Ichi the Killer" and the "Dead or alive" trilogy – throws things at the wall to see what sticks.

In that case, we have the ninja with the frog costume, the knitting circle/blood farm underground and the always excellent Yayan Ruhian of "The Raid" fame. That's enough for me.

The vampire story pales a bit by comparison, but still keeps the story together. It tells you something about a movie when the yakuza-vampire angle is the grounding part.

At moments during this film, fans will marvel at Miike's nonchalant excellence... at others, they will either be scratching their heads wondering WTF they're watching, or taking it at face value and enjoying it for what it is.

But what is this film? For me, it was a satire of the absurdities that go on in Japanese comics and, for the most part, I quite enjoyed it. Come on, there's that kick-arse villain from The Raid, a cool Yakuza lead and Bruce Lee in a frog costume - what's not to enjoy?

I have to admit, I really didn't understand why the kid went after the female Yakuza and not the Priest-type dude, who quickly got relegated to a sub-par, may as well forget he exists villain, but most won't likely understand ANY of this film, so it's difficult to recommend it to the anyone I don't personally know as digging this kind of off-beat weirdness.

If you give it a go, I hope that you laugh as hard as I did at the frog's karate chop, which earned the film and extra star simply because I haven't laughed so hard for a long time.

This really is pretty much as love it/hate it as they come... only, the "love" is always going to be replaced by the lesser word of "enjoy".

For those not experienced any of Takeshi Miike's previous work, you are going to be in for a bit of a door slamming in the face experience with this one. There's no denying that he can direct a movie (and he has made some excellent movies) but some of his most popular films have been more offbeat & comical like this.

There's no point explaining the storyline as it's non-linear, intentionally a farce and practically irrelevant. Don't bother trying to intellectualise any of it either like one guy I overheard did as I left the cinema. It's just a farce, and makes no pretences to be otherwise.

You'll either fall for its ludicrous charms in much the same way many do with Month Pythons' work, but it will leave many cold. The humour is quirky but often violent and cruel so won't suit all. Might even offend some sensibilities. It often bored me but others in the cinema were in hysterics. Lots of teenage boy level humour too.

For those who lose patience with this, the only respite is that despite the silliness, you'll find at least something somewhere to laugh at.

It's not by any means the director's best work. Not by a long shot. Still for fan boys they'll lap it up, for all else it will likely miss the mark even if doesn't do so on the screen.

First off I believe Takashi Miike is a mad genius and a very hard working director i mean the guy makes like 4 movies a year and that's pretty exhausting if you ask me but he manages to bring quality as much as quantity and his latest movie Yakuza Apocalypse is no different from his other works it's got all the elements you want from a Miike film, genre mixing, gore, weirdness and over the top violence with little to no humanity to it. the plot is very simple, a Yakuza boss ,who is also a vampire but he managed to keep that a secret from everybody else, is murdered but before he dies he bites his henchman and the latter gets infected and decides to avenge his boss. if you think this is a serious movie please don't watch it because you're not getting the point or you probably never seen a Takashi Miike film apart from those serious ones he makes once in a while like 13 Assassins and Audition to mention a few. the point from this movie is that it's absurd but it tries to be a serious film kind of like Leslie Nielsen's character in The Naked Gun franchise he's a very serious guy but everything around him is just plain stupid and absurd. but here comes the genius of Takashi Miike he manages to keep this film Absurd and Sublime at the same time he knows that there's a fine line between Genius and Maniac and he walks that line with complete confidence. Overall this is a decent film it's not Miike's best but it's still highly entertaining and fun especially for the people who are familiar with his work. My Rating 7/10.

Miike melds genres in this yakuza/vampire flick. This is certainly crazy, but I don't think it's one of Miike's better films. Hayato Ichihara stars as a yakuza henchman who sees his boss decapitated in front of him. The boss has a secret: he's a vampire. And before his head dies, he bites Ichihara on the neck and imparts his powers to him. With those powers (and the power to create more vampires), he looks for vengeance for his boss. Simple enough set-up, but there's a ton of other stuff packed into the film. A lot of that stuff is fun - particularly the late-film appearance of a giant green frog monster who kicks all kinds of butt - but none of it is very coherent. It feels like just weird stuff for the sake of weirdness. Still, there's enough here worth seeing that I'd recommend seeing it, particularly if you're a fan of Miike or just cult cinema. Yayan Ruhian, who starred in The Raid and its sequel, also stars (he also briefly appears in The Force Awakens, but at least here he gets to fight).