Been on a bit of a Miike kick today, just watched a bunch of the films he made after 2006 (when I stopped paying attention). It's kind of weird seeing Miike movies made with a budget and polish, I still always associate him with DTV stuff.
Anyways, some thoughts
Sun Scarred
As much as I love ‘holy fuck, what was that?’ Miike, I often find his calmer, more reflective, films to be his best. Sun Scarred has very few of the transgressive moments that you normally associate with Miike, but it’s bubbling and broiling with ideas.
The movies focuses on a Salaryman called Mr. Katayama who comes to the aid of a person being violently beaten by a juvenile gang. Scaring most of the gang away he ends up in a one on one fight with the gang’s leader and ends up beating the shit out of the kid.
From this point onwards Katayama’s life falls apart as the kid, released quickly from custody, murders Katayama’s young daughter and is then enveloped by the protection of the legal system.
The film should be a Death Wish/Death Sentence style revenge thriller, but Miike dials down the violence and only indulges in it in the opening ten and closing ten minutes. The majority of the film is spent with Katayama as he deals with the fallout of his heroism and becomes more embroiled in his need for vengeance.
What Miike does with the film is make us actively route for Katayama to brutally murder some kids. Throughout the film Miike casts a sneering eye at the way the media spins the story and the way the justice system seems to protect children from any wrong doing and as such you’re supposed to be completely invested when Katayama’s desire for vengeance transmogrifies into something physical and visceral. Miike treats the kids as essentially feral and almost nihilistic, kind of indulging in shocking acts of violence because it’s something to do. Meanwhile Miike keeps the story closely hung around Katayama, making us feel bitterly close to his life as it spins out of control. There are a couple of fantastic visual moments in the film, wind-screen wipers scraping blood from a wind as a camera zooms in on Katayama and an entire section shot in black and white as Katayama essentially becomes dead inside, but it’s a surprisingly restrained film from Miike.
Crows Zero
Just absolute madness. Not madness in the Gozu/Visitor Q sense, but madness in how invested Miike is in the story. Essentially the plot is about a bunch of school-kids who want to ‘take over’ their school. The way they take over the school is by instigating massive brawls in the classrooms and playgrounds and gyms. What makes the film work is that Miike treats this like it is ultimate, serious business, with alliances and broken truces, deceptions and ever escalating stakes. It’s essentially a gangster movie set against the backdrop of a school and it’s never anything less than entertaining for the duration of its runtime.
Helping things out are some fantastically nasty looking fight sequences which are all heightened but have an amazing grounded feel to them. This is the sort of film where high-school kids can spin kick and drop kick each other with insane ease, and it’s full of really painful looking beat downs. Lots of broken bones and blood splatter in this. There are also some great moments of Miike lunacy, including bowling with human beings and a running joke about one of the kids getting darts and baseballs smashed into his head. A parallel story involving actual Yakuza interest in the school is perhaps one of the few things that doesn’t work, but leads into the absolutely nutty final brawl. The final sequence is essentially about 170 kids kicking the shit out of each other in the rain and it works stupendously, even when cross-cutting between the fight scene and a weird J-Pop ballad.
Yakuza: Like A Dragon
Just absolutely mental, like everyone of Miike’s impulses and urges turned up to 11 and used to create a video-game adaptation. There’s none of the usual transgression in terms of sex and violence in this film, but is full of patented Miike moments of inspired lunacy. Even the way Miike moves his camera and edits the film feel completely different from anything else. Essentially it’s an adaptation of the Yakuza videogames and what it means is that Miike has a colourful cast of characters to mess around with him in his favourite district of Japan. In terms of tone and style it feels a little like a belated sequel to Dead or Alive, the continuing musical riff feels directly snatched from the start of the movie, but it’s far more light hearted and fun than any of Miike’s other movies.
It’s also got about four or five separate plotlines which are happening concurrently but don’t really intersect, but more than anything else this is largely an excuse for Miike to create elaborate setpieces and make weird jokes. Goro Majima, a sort of sub-boss in the film, is the focus of much of the film and he gets a ton of great little moments. His revival in an ambulance and his penchant for baseball related brutality making him a shining star in the middle of the film. He’s a great, flamboyant, villain and the film really buzzes with energy when he’s on screen which is more than can be said for the protagonist, Ryu, who is basically a cipher. There’s also a fun little side story involving two bank robbers and Sho Aikawa’s perplexed police officer which is fantastically
