The director of Dead or Alive, Takashi Miike, made his name on the international scene with Audition, a chilling psychological thriller that builds from a quiet start towards a prolonged torture sequence almost too unbearable to watch. But such deliberate pacing isn't typical of Miike, whose movies often assault the viewer with an onslaught of slam-bang action that makes John Woo look like Eric Rohmer. Dead or Alive, his most successful cops-vs-yakuza thriller to date, kicks off with six non-stop minutes of machine gun-paced violence, sex and slaughter, all set to... a pounding heavy-metal beat. Thereafter things calm down a little, though not much. Given Miike's penchant for murky, livid-toned visuals and skewed camera angles, it's not always too easy to work out exactly who's doing what to whom, but the general outline's clear enough. The Tokyo underworld is being torn apart by a turf war between the yakuza gangs and the invading Chinese triads. Ambitious yakuza member Ryuichi isn't above playing both sides off against each other in his bid for power, while police detective Jojima, himself none too scrupulous in his methods, is out to destroy the gangs. Into this conventional plot framework Miike piles enough warped characters and bizarre, twisted happenings to fuel half-a-dozen Tarantino movies, while cheerfully borrowing--and inflating--key moments from such hard-boiled gangster-noirs as The Big Heat and Kiss Me Deadly. One character deep-fries his own hand, a stripper is drowned in a paddling-pool filled with her own excrement, and the literally apocalyptic finale, the showdown to end all showdowns, will leave you gasping. The appallingly prolific Miike, who regularly makes about five movies a year, has since directed two sequels--the first only three months after the original.--Philip Kemp [show more]
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Fast-paced, high-octane Yakuza thriller from director Miike Takashi. Ryuichi and Toji are two brothers eager to make a name for themselves in the Tokyo criminal underworld. Their nemesis is Detective Jojima, a cop who has become involved in various crooked deals in order to pay for his ailing daughter's life-saving operation. As Ryuichi tries to take a slice of a large Taiwanese drug haul, Jojima draws in closer, and the pair get set for their final apocalyptic confrontation.
Please note this is a region 2 DVD and will require a region 2 (Europe) or region Free DVD Player in order to play. After a rapid-fire montage of two groups of gangsters, one Japanese, the other ethnic Chinese, killing each other and everybody else on screen, DEAD OR ALIVE's story begins when a police officer announces, Round up everybody who looks (suspicious), even if they aren't Chinese. The Chinese have been living in Japan for centuries, but have never been accepted or integrated into Japanese society. This larger conflict underlies the blood and gore of the two gangs vying to make a big drug purchase from a mainland Chinese gang. When Jojima (Show Aikawa) an otherwise honest cop, needs money for an operation for his daughter, he gets a loan from the head of the Japanese gang, but when his partner kills the brother of the leader of the Chinese mafia, Ryuichi (Riki Rakeuchi), a blood feud begins between the two men. DEAD OR ALIVE's fast-paced cinematic presentation, black humor, tongue-in-cheek satire, and misogynist sadism set it apart from similar films by Takeshi Kitano. Director Takashi Miike's earlier film, AUDITION, is known for its stunning ending, but here he builds up to a parody of the big showdown that is so hysterically comic that, borrowing from Monty Python and DR. STRANGELOVE, it reaches absolutely apocalyptic proportions. Actors Riki Takeuchi, Renji Ishibashi, Sho Aikawa, Susumu Terajima & Ren Osugi Director Takashi Miike Certificate 18 years and over Year 2000 Screen Widescreen 1.85:1 Languages Japanese - Dolby Digital (2.0) Stereo Subtitles English Duration 1 hour and 45 minutes (approx) Region Region 2 - Will only play on European Region 2 or multi-region DVD players.
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