Graveyard(s) of Honor (1975/2002) first published by Little White Lies, as part 111 of my Cinema Psychotronicum column “Rikio Ishikawa, the hero of this film, was born in Aug 6, 1924.” So reads the text that opens Kinji Fukasaku’s Graveyard of Honor (Jingi no Hakaba, 1975), as we see black-and-white photographs from the very real…
First Love (Hatsukoi) first published by Little White Lies “Things are getting complicated,” young low-ranking yakuza Kase (Shōta Sometano) tells corruptible police detective Otomo (Nao Ômori, Ichi from Takashi Miike‘s 2003 Ichi the Killer) near the beginning of Miike’s latest, First Love (Hatsukoi). As Gondo (Seiyô Uchino), the boss of Kase’s syndicate, returns from a…
Longer version of piece published by Sight & Sound as part of coverage of the Cult programme at the London Film Festival 2015 Across an impossibly prolific and varied filmography, Takashi Miike has made the yakuza perhaps his most visited subject, although not always in a realist milieu. In his Dead or Alive (1999), he pitted…
Pale Flower first published by EyeforFilm Mid-ranking yakuza Muraki (Ryo Ikebe) has just been released from a prison stint for murder, and as he looks over the streets of Tokyo for the first time in three years, he muses in voice-over about how nothing ever really changes and how people are little more than half-dead, stupid animals,…
First published by Movie Gazette Review: Internal and external strife, honour, ambition, loyalty, treachery, revenge, love and death. Where films like Troy (2004) paid mere lipservice to these themes, Miike Takashi’s Agitator (aka Araburu tamashii-tachi, aka The Outlaw Souls) treats them with the depth and intelligence that they deserve, spinning a modern epic from the convoluted, often ruthless, manoeuvrings of the Japanese…
Ichi the Killer first published by Movie Gazette Based on a popular Japanese comicbook by Hideo Yamamoto, Takashi Miike’s controversial Ichi the Killer (Koroshiya 1, or Killer 1) translates perfectly all the manga’s energy, anarchy and illogic into the kinetic language of film. When yakuza boss Anjo goes missing with 300 million yen, his loyal lieutenant Kakihara (Tadanobu…
Review first published by Movie Gazette. Review When yakuza Ozaki (Aikawa Sho) displays increasingly deranged behaviour, the gang’s boss Azamawari (Ishibashi Renji) assigns Ozaki’s subordinate Minami (Sone Hideki) to drive the embarrassing yakuza to Nagoya where he is to be executed and dumped. Reluctant to kill a superior and friend who had once saved his…
Pigs and Battleships (Buta to Gunkan) first published by Little White Lies Pigs and Battleships (Buta to gunkan), the fifth feature to have been made for Nikkatsu by Shôhei Imamura, opens with a clash of sound and image that sets the tone for the entire film. As we see the Japanese studio’s logo, the drum roll on…