Dead or Alive

The only home-grown sensation at last year’s Tokyo Film Festival, Miike’s radical thriller almost defies description. It begins with an entire reel of ‘abstract’ action, unreadable as narrative exposition, and ends with a sequence that has to be seen to be believed – don’t let anyone tell you about it before you see it. The seven reels in the middle (set in Miike’s favourite turf, the Kabuki-cho district of Shinjuku) centre on a cataclysmic clash between a cop and a Yakuza which makes as much sense as these things ever do, but Miike as ever keeps his eyes wide open for cruel incidentals (e.g., how to use a near-naked man as the target in a knife-throwing act) and wicked digressions (e.g., how to excite an Alsatian while preparing to shoot an animal-porn movie). Pairing Aikawa Sho and Takeuchi Riki for the first time in the leading roles, the film has a supporting cast of everyone’s favourite Japanese character actors and boasts spectacular imagery throughout thanks to daring work from Yamamoto Hideo, the cinematographer of Hana-Bi. This isn’t Miike’s most heartfelt or serious movie, but its gleeful trampling on all rules of form and structure may make it his most experimental. And boy, does it move. (T.R.)