Jitsuroku Andô Noboru kyôdô-den: Rekka

Miike shows us in this film his outstanding gift for the yakuza genre from the first minute to the last. This time he adds a soundtrack from the Flower Traveling Band, Satori, a Doom Metal key album from 1971 that makes those master shoots, of perfect color, shine without stopping during the cinematographic experience he proposes. His characters flow before the viewer like a handful of impossible to stop Japanese scarfaces. Shinjuku, mafia, escorts, magic and Rock and Roll !!

DEADLY OUTLAW: REKKA is a rare misfire from the usually interesting Takashi Miike, who can typically be relied upon from making outrageously entertaining movies. This is a standard Yakuza movie, featuring a low rent thug who decides to go on an odyssey of revenge, yet despite a few moments of surrealism and violence you can't really tell it's a Miike film at all.

Instead it has more in common with low budget art-house fare, featuring interchangeable characters and some padded scenes of characters wandering the streets aimlessly at night. Oh, there's bound to be a brutal fight scene or execution around the next corner, but there isn't anything that makes you care about what's going on. Okay, I don't watch a Miike film for the characterisation, but at least ICHI THE KILLER had tons of incident and AUDITION's slow build worked when matched with THAT ending.

This one's predictable in the extreme, I couldn't care less about the characters, and the whole 'stone face' type of acting is just a bit dull. Miike tries to spice things up with a sex scene here and a mutilation there, but it isn't enough; for much of the running time, I was simply bored. DEADLY OUTLAW: REKKA does have the same kind of hustle and vibe as the early gangster films of Beat Takeshi, but it lacks their finesse and raw power. Attempts to make it feel like an old-fashioned grindhouse movie of the 1970s don't really gel either; instead this movie is both slight and forgettable.

Assassins from the Otaki group murder Yuya Uchida (manager/producer of 1970's psychedelic prog metal band Flower Travellin' Band, who provide the film's soundtrack) leader of the Sanada group. Riki Takeuchi considered him a father figure and wants vengeance, but the leaders of both groups want to avoid a war and enlist Bando group leader Sonny Chiba to negotiate a truce.

So ... it's all a scheme by both groups second-in-commands to eliminate the leaders and take over, with Chiba running the whole show. They trick Takeuchi into killing Otaki group leader Renji Ishibashi and then try to kill him to close all loose ends. Those loose ends stay very much open.

Takashi Miike has a tendency to make films that are so loose and ramshackle that they feel like they may fall apart at any minute. This is one of those. That doesn't mean they're necessarily bad ... and this one certainly isn't ... but it does mean that after a really dynamic opening and before it's amazing gonzo conclusion, you get a lot of meandering scenes of yakuza dumping plot exposition on each other. It's not always dull ... mainly due to Miike's tendency to stage very weird scenes like two yakuza talking outdoors in a playground in the rain each holding tiny transparent plastic umbrellas ... but it frequently is.

The Flower Travellin' Band soundtrack is worth the price of admission.

Miike makes another yakuza picture. It's not especially groundbreaking, and it's certainly not one of Miike's deeper films, but it is extremely entertaining. That's mostly because of the main character, Kunisada (Miike regular Riki Takeuchi), who is the most psychopathic character in Japanese movies since Tatsuya Nakadai's evil samurai in Sword of Doom. Kunisada's mob boss, his surrogate father, is ambushed and murdered (though not before nearly strangling his assailant to death; the hit-man only lives because he cuts the dead man's hands off as they clench around his windpipe). Simultaneously, Kunisada, almost as if through a psychic bond, breaks out of jail and starts to go against the rival gang. The only problem is that the boss's death isn't necessarily a bad thing from his own gang's perspective. They and their rival gang try desperately to make a truce. Unfortunately for everyone, except for a small handful of loyal comrades, Kunisada won't stop until everyone around him is dead. The film suffers from Miike's major flaw as a filmmaker: a lack of coherency. There seem to be dozens of named characters, and it becomes very difficult to sort out who everyone is. I had to watch key scenes a second time to piece it all together (though I had most of it straight by the end of the film). But, even if you never quite figure it out, Miike's patented break-neck action sequences are so outrageously done that the film is more than worth watching. Watch out when Kunisada finds a rocket launcher!

This was really one great ride from Takashi Miike, if you love or you are familliar with his style you will really enjoy Deadly Outlaw:Rekka, it is not intelligent movie, it is not movie with a big budget but it is entertraining and full of energy, and yes the cast in this one is amazing, so many great memorable faces from Japanese cinema, sadly a lot of them are now deceased: Joe Yamanaka, Rikiya Yasuoka, Yuya Uchida, Tetsuro Tanba, Shin'ichi Chiba and the main protagonist of the movie Riki Takeuchi, this is one of his most memorable roles for sure. The first half of the movie is like any other regular Yakuza movie, the second part is more unique cartoonish Miike style, and it works in the movie very well, love the ending when Riki is taking Bazooka to destroy his enemies. You will remember this movie thanks to magnificent cast and its charachters, i enjoyed this one more than more known Dead or Alive. In the same day i have watched Kikoku or Yakuza Demon from 2003, it is different sort of the movie, more regular Yakuza crime, but my recoomendation is to watch it in combination with Deadly Outlaw Rekka. I give this one 8/10.