Yet another Yakuza film from director Takashi Miike. I don't think anyone has documented the Yakuza in terms of fiction more than Miike has. These movies are 'striaght to video/DVD,' and are directed pretty fast and sporty. Riki Takeuchi stars as the main character. Takeuchi is probably 'The King of the Straight to Video Yakuza Bad-ass.' He stared in an American-co-Japanese Yakuza flick called 'The Yakuza Way.' It was terrible and... (woah! I think I'll review that crap in a second! ^^)... mindless, but you could tell amidst all the cheesiness that there was something to the way Takeuchi played a Yakuza...The film opens up with Yakuza boss Muto flying a kite, guarded by Seiji (Riki Takeuchi), and his aniki (little yakuza brother). The Muto family are part of the 'Date' syndicate. A rival syndicate, the Tendo, attack the Date family, which leads to a meeting in which Boss Muto was required to pay money to help finance the gang war. However, Muto does not have enough so offers an assassination instead. Seiji squeels on his boss to the police where abouts he hides his gun, and Muto gets arrested and sentenced to 2 years. Seiji, and his aniki, Yoshi, then attempt to take out the whole of the Tendo group by themselves, kinda like a 2-man army. I won't rant to more as to not spoil, but the ending, involving Seiji and his sister is pretty ironic.
Usually straight to video movies are the cheesiest of the creme de la crap of film (e.g. Universal Soldier 2), but Japanese straight to video films are different, and made with more of an independant edge. Often quickly made sporty movies like this can be a strain to watch, just so you can say 'I seen it all, and it was douche,' but Miike always seems to do a good job with these Yakuza movies. I'm watching a TV series called MPD Psycho he directed back in the late 90s, and I don't think to much of it at present (alot of the gore n sex is mosiaced out on the DVD release I own)- it's the one work of his besides Young Thugs Inocent Blood I'm not liking on a scale of 6/10.
My rating: 6.7/10
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