Gokudô kuroshakai

The same day as watching Shinjuku Triad Society I continued with this one. It was a Japanese film special and I didn't read any background info before the movie whatsoever, but after STS (and Kuroshiya Ichi a month before) I decided to give a miss to all Miike films. Luckily I did not know this was Miike.

This was really a surprise noir after the no substance of the previous mentioned. A yakuza goes to Taiwan and works as a hit-man when suddenly his son is dumped upon him, a son he didn't know he had and doesn't want to have either. I don't want to give away much but the movie is dense with atmosphere and humour, it's easily his best alongside Audition, Birdpeople of China and The Negotiator. Akin for Takeshi Kitano, but definitely Miike.

Miike strays off the beaten path to do his own take on 'film-noir' (a tribute to Melville?): limited dialog, moody settings, and deliberately slow development all make for a unique movie in Miike's immense filmography.

As surprising for its subtlety, pace, and precision as for its lack of the standard Miike moments, it is definitely not the director's best (for that see "The Bird People of China", "Ichi the Killer" or "Gozu"), but a great movie for a rainy Sunday afternoon, naturally if you don't mind the occasional yakuza violence.

Could be read as the director's attempt at a character study (usually absent from his work) or an exercise in cinematic economy - in either case it is a movie well-above mediocrity, yet not quite reaching the level of masterpiece.

Director Takeshi Miike takes a break from his usual trademark ultra-violent comic book style action to bring us this slow paced, yet interesting drama, portraying an ex-Yakuza hit-man exiled to Taiwan for reasons unknown. The rain throughout the movie not only sets the mood but also symbolises the monotony of normal, everyday life felt by the protagonist as a contrast to his previous life as a Yakuza. Coming to terms with his new life, he does small time hits for a local gang and manages to maintain some stability and a sense of purpose in the otherwise meaningless existence of a hit-man. However, his world is turned upside down when a woman he doesn't remember leaves him with a child who is supposedly his. As he goes about his business of contract kills, his newly acquired 'son' follows him with fascination, observing and mentally clinging onto his alleged father in a cold, lonely and rainy city. Things get even more twisted when he befriends a prostitute and here starts the mingling of this unlikely trio, a subtle touch, typical of the twisted world of Miike. Overall, a heart warming yet poignant drama depicting the harshness of life, comparable to Luc Besson's Leon or Takeshi Kitano's Kikujiro no natsu.

Rainy Dog, part of Miike's Triad Society is a truly beautiful film. A lot of people are going to notice, and quite rightly, that it does not conform to the traditional Miike template. Instead it moves at a slow pace with long lingering shots of the rainy streets of Taipei. The action is restrained to only a few brief gun "battles" and a stabbing, but the film is not about violence. It is about the aftermath of violence. As one character says towards the end, it is about life, death and hate. There are no opportunities to glorify the violence and every murder carries with it intense and very real consequences.

The sound track flitters between Shinjuku Triad style electronic drum effects and keyboards and country style slide guitar which really hints at the films Western roots. Essentially it is a film about an outsider used to fending for himself who is forced to care about another person and in doing so realize the value of his own life. This is not a new format and is a storyline you can find in variation in many John Wayne movies, the difference here is that I bet you won't be expecting it in a film by the man who brought the world Fudoh or Ichi the Killer.

Before his turn in Dead or Alive, Sho Aikawa turns up here as ultra cool ex-Yakuza, Yuuji, who has retired to the back alleys of Taipei to earn money as a hit-man. Early on in the film a young child is left in his house by an unknown woman. At the heart of the film, and it is a genuine heart, is the relationship between Aikawa's character and his supposed son. Without wanting to give anything anyway, it is the developments between the two which make the final scene one of the most tense scenes I have seen in film for a long time. Rarely is an audience allowed to sympathies and care for characters in a film like Rainy Dog yet it is as if Miike deliberately wants to alter our expectations. It is through caring about the characters that you realize you want them to live happily ever after.

Tomorowo Taguchi, returning from his role as the psychotic Wang in Shinjuku Triad Society has a minor but important role in Rainy Dog. His obsessive pursuit of Sho Aikawa which we see has destroyed his life mirrors intelligently Aikawa's character who is also letting his obsessions drive him to ruin. Taguchi I consider to be one of the best Japanese actors in the last decade, he is certainly one of the most prolific, and here his meagre five or six scenes are infused with an energy which helps motivate the rest of the film. I am looking forward to the next film I see with him in.

I believe that Miike had to produce this film with a largely non-Japanese crew, it is a testament to his bravery as a film maker (I dare say few directors would risk such a venture) that Rainy Dog looks and feels as it does. There are a few moments when the sound does not quite match the action (check out Aikawa beating up Taguchi early in the film for some of the most bizarre punching sound effects) but the film as a whole does not suffer. I do not know whether it was a lack of Japanese crew and skills that led Miike to make a slower movie, if so, his ability to compensate is second-to none. Instead of trying to make viewers vomit (no sick bags dispensed at viewings of this film) Miike has done something that only Japanese directors seem willing to do (Takeshi Kitano or Takashi Ishii are prone to this) and that is to promote thought and feeling during a film that is essentially a "mobster" movie. There are few forgettable scenes and some are utterly heart wrenching (Aikawa sleeping indoors with a prostitute whilst his son sleeps under a blanket with a dog in the rain).

In honesty there is little I can say against Rainy Dog. It is a superb film, a moving film and one which will make you think long and hard. Above all else it will, like most Miike films, reinforce your sense of relief that somewhere there is someone with a brain making films with a brain. And a hell of a lot of style too.

Rainy Dog will no doubt come as a big surprise to many casual viewers of the work of Takashi Miike; featuring none of the over-the-top violence, sadism and hyper-kinetic surrealism of his more iconic pictures, such as Ichi the Killer, The Happiness of the Katakuris, Gozu and Dead or Alive.

Instead, Rainy Dog is an incredibly bleak, brooding, deliberately paced and entirely authentic gangster drama; focusing on the well-worn themes of love, life, family, responsibility, honour and retribution. The films tells the story of Yuuji; an exiled Japanese Yakuza living hand to mouth in a Taiwanese slum, trying to make ends meat by carrying out various hits for the local Triads so that he can afford to buy a fake passport to get him self back to Japan. If this wasn't difficult enough, his life is further complicated by the arrival of a small boy, who is literally dumped on Yuuji's doorstep and introduced as his son. This forces our central protagonist to think more specifically about his life and future; as his purgatory-like existence in this neon-lit jungle hell - plagued by constant rain and bursts of matter-of-fact violence - threatens a single fate of bloody retribution.

As the previous reviewer noted, the film is probably closer in tone to the work of someone like "Beat" Takeshi Kitano, with the deliberate pacing of the narrative and preoccupations with character and tone really carrying the film above the more dramatic moments of action. That said, the film is hardly an anomaly within Miike's rich back-catalogue of works; suggesting the quiet, almost serene moments of films like The Bird People in China, Ley Lines and indeed, the first hour of his masterpiece Audition.

It's wrong to think of Miike as a shallow provocateur; desperately trying to shock the viewer with more and more outlandish moments from film to film. Simply put; the man is a serious talent... as comfortable with straight crime dramas like Shinjuku Triad Society, Agitator and the film in question, as he is with more personal, idiosyncratic projects like Visitor Q, Gozu and The Happiness of the Katakuris. Rainy Dog might not be the film that I watch again and again - lacking the sheer audacity and room for multiple interpretations offered by the latter collection of films - but at the same time, it adds a great deal of depth to Miike's reputation as a highly skilled and highly talented filmmaker away from all the shock-value and occasional lapses of self-parody.

Rainy Dog is dark, moody, uncompromising film-noir at its finest; all wonderfully atmospheric, nicely shot and subtly acted (particularly by the three main leads who come to take on the personification of the "family" central to the thoughts and feelings of the main character). True, it may not be the greatest film that Miike has ever made, or indeed, one that is indicative of his trademark style, but it is, regardless, one that remains an enjoyable if somewhat slow-moving crime drama that shows Miike's capability of working with a variety of different acting styles (from child to adult, domestic to foreign, professional to amateur), whilst simultaneously placing further emphasis on the idea of character, rather than spectacle.