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Analyzing Takashi Miike under the aspect of foreigness, “The Guys from Paradise” marks another entry adding up to his earlier movies like “Black Triad Trilogy” or “The Bird People in China”. This time he sends Japanese Salaryman Kohei off to the Philippines for a comical jail drama.

Innocent but convicted for drug trafficking on a business trip, Kohei finds himself in a prison cell in Manila. But being among with six other Japanese inmates, he quickly manages to move in and out the prison freely while the corrupt guards take bribes and keep a blind eye to the drug dealing that the group is organizing within the prison walls. The business of the Japanese group is disturbed by rival Philippine gangs and a discovery of stolen diamonds spices up the whole plot.

The contradiction between the local Philippines and the Japanese, who find themselves in a fish-out-of-the-water scenario at first,...

If one believes one of the leading experts on Asian, especially Japanese cinema, Blues Harp by Takashi Miike is “the film that will shed much-needed light on the hidden sides of that genuine filmmaker Takashi Miike”. In a year which can be regarded as one of the quieter years in the career of the director in terms of the film made, “Blues Harp”, together with “The Bird People in China” and “Young Thugs: Nostalgia”, defines indeed an emotional, even melancholic side of Miike, a name many film-goers and critics rather associate with excess, violence and and the ludicrous.

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As with his “Black Society Trilogy”, especially “Rainy Dog” and “Ley Lines”, Miike has proven himself to be a director of many facets, even though his themes – the outsider, masculinity, violence and family units – have stayed at the core of most of his films. It is interesting that a...