DEAD OR ALIVE 2: BIRDS (2000)

Soooo...sleepy!!!  I was wide awake when I started this film and damn near dead by the time it finally (mercifully) ended.

Two childhood friends, who were raised in the same orphanage but later lost contact with each other, just happen to run into each other...during a yakuza gang leader assassination!!!  The one guy is a hit man who is staring down the scope of his rifle at his target when suddenly out of nowhere one of the bosses' bodyguards goes nuts and starts killing everybody.  The one guy knows that his long lost friend will go hideout back at their small island hometown, so he goes there himself.  They reunite and have all kinds of fun and emotional music plays while the rain falls down in slow motion.  Eventually they put on a play for the local children which features a female turtle duck with a detachable penis and robot arm having sex with a bumblebee.  I'm serious.  After the success of the children's play performance they decide that they work so well together that they should go into business assassinating people and donating the proceeds to charity.

I love Takashi Miike, but goddamn this film was just not my bag.  There were a few interesting moments, good performances (including a small appearance by Shinya Tsukamoto, who I always enjoy) and it looks great, but that story is boring and goofy as fuck.  Even the necrophilia scene and the dude with the 40 pound cock couldn't liven things up.  Skip it.

Part 1 - Dead or Alive (1999)
Part 3 - Dead or Alive: Final (2002)

ICHI THE KILLER (2001)

"There's no love in your punches."

I recently watched the excellent "Fargo" season 1 (in one sitting) and thought to myself that Billy Bob Thornton's character might be the most badass crime syndicate enforcer of all time...then I remembered Asano Tadanobu's character from ICHI THE KILLER.  Strangely enough, even though Tadanobu steals the entire movie, he's not the title character.  The Ichi in the title is actually the character that Tadanobu's Kakihara is searching for.

As the film opens, crime family boss Anjo is slaughtered by a psychotic killer (Ichi), but after a professional clean up crew wipe away any traces of the murder, people start to think that maybe Anjo actually split and took 3 million yen of the gang's money with him. The gang's loyal enforcer, Kakihara, doesn't believe this and starts searching for clues. Meanwhile, Ichi is busy dealing with his own demons because not only is he completely insane, but he's been brainwashed by yet another psychopath, Jijii (played by TETSUO: THE IRON MAN director Shinya Tsukamoto!)

There's been a ton of hype and stuff said about ICHI THE KILLER over the years, so I doubt I can add anything new that you haven't already heard.  Plain and simple: it's a great film.  I'm not really sure why it (and AUDITION) are the two most popular Miike films, but they are and they are both deserving of all the praise they get.  In the case of ITK, the story and style are similar to a number of other Miike's yakuza crime dramas, but what really makes it stand out is Asano Tadanobu's portrayal of Kakihara.  I've seen this film probably a half dozen times or more since 2001 and when I watched it again this morning for this review I was completely hypnotized by Kakihara.  The guy is so unstable and dangerous that you have absolutely no idea what he is going to do next.  He's truly terrifying.

Good pace (even at 129 minutes), awesome camerawork, great acting by a cast full of familiar faces, violence, the film's title written in jizz (I honestly cannot think of another film that has done that, I mean, besides FORREST GUMP of course), a guy wearing fluffy dog ears literally sniffing out clues, even more violence, ridiculous computer-generated special effects that were sooo stupid that they were perfect, rape, torture, nipple removing, tongue slicing.

Mandatory viewing for fans of the stranger side of Cinema.

A message from Miike on the DEAD OR ALIVE (1999) DVD.