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Dead Or Alive

1999, Movie, NR, 104 mins

Dead Or Alive: Review

DEAD OR ALIVE | DEAD OR ALIVE: HANZAISHA
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Art-pulp of the highest order. From the synapse-stinging opening sequence — a non-stop barrage of bullets, blood, strippers and Chinese noodles — to its wonderfully absurd, apocalyptic finale, everything about Takashi Miike's brilliant and blood-soaked crime thriller comes as a shock: The sex, the violence, the degradation and the realization that an exciting young filmmaker has invigorated a moribund genre. It's a typical night in the Shinjuku district of Tokyo: A Chinese gangster is gunned down in the middle of his noodle dinner (you know exactly what he's been eating after a shotgun blasts open his stomach); a bleach-blond yakuza is knifed in the neck while having sex in the men's room and a sweaty geek in glasses is snorting a line of cocaine long enough to keep the entire Bolivian army marching for days. And things are only going to get worse. A new Taiwanese drug route is about to open up via Yokohama, and a Chinese-born young gun named Ryuichi (Riki Takeuchi) is trying to set up a deal. Unfortunately, his negotiating tactics — which include robbing a bank truck, killing a cop and opening fire in a crowded restaurant — disturb the uneasy peace between the Tokyo yakuza and the Chinese mafia. As the bullets start to fly and one bad turn is answered by another, Detective Jojima (Show Aikawa) of the Tokyo police department vows to take Ryuichi down — if the yakuza don't beat him to it. Like his countryman, "Beat" Takeshi Kitano, Miike has fashioned a yakuza thriller with a good deal of soul. No one in Miike's world gets out with his or her morality entirely intact, and even the most hard-bitten characters are touched by personal tragedy and a sense of dislocation. The story of Ryuichi and his gang is also the story of a generation of Japanese whose families were left behind in China after the war, and now return to a country in which they have no place. But unlike Kitano, there's nothing lyrical about any of it. Miike's massacres are extraordinarily violent, dizzingly chaotic and sickeningly brutal. Some of it makes sense, much of it doesn't, and the plot is entirely beside the point. One thing, however, is clear: The film will leave you with images you won't soon forget, no matter how badly you might want to. leave a comment --Ken Fox
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