Jitsuroku Andô Noboru kyôdô-den: Rekka

excerpt, more at my location - A yakuza film is bread and butter for Takashi Miike, and Deadly Outlaw: Rekka (Jitsuroku Andô Noboru kyôdô-den: Rekka), sandwiched between the sadistic violence of Ichi The Killer and the surrealism of Gozu, is surprisingly ordinary when compared with much of the director's oeuvre. However, the straightforward nature of this 2002 film is the essence of its charm.

Deadly Outlaw: Rekka is such unabashed fun it will leave you feeling indulgent and sporting a maniacal grin from start to finish, just like the one, you might imagine subsequent to viewing, Miike wore while making it. Concentrated to an hour-and-a-half, as so few recent films are, it hits you like a shot of pure audio-visual entertainment straight in the arm.

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.

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.

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 !!

Those of you that are used to American-style movies, don't watch this because you're probably going to be bored. People, like me, who are used to weird Japanese movie-styles will mildly enjoy this movie. The editing is very strange, sometimes you get the impression that your DVD has skipped, the sound is also weird in some places, I can't explain exactly what's wrong with it but watch this film and you'll know what I mean.

I recently watched "Imprint". That's an episode in the "Masters Of Horror"-series directed by Takashi Miike. THAT's what I call a strong and violent film. It was awesome!

Don't expect too much and you will be entertained. But not as much as you expected. A decent watch. Nothing to keep.