DEADLY OUTLAW: REKKA is a rare misfire from the usually interesting Takashi Miike, who can typically be relied upon from making outrageously entertaining movies. This is a standard Yakuza movie, featuring a low rent thug who decides to go on an odyssey of revenge, yet despite a few moments of surrealism and violence you can't really tell it's a Miike film at all.
Instead it has more in common with low budget art-house fare, featuring interchangeable characters and some padded scenes of characters wandering the streets aimlessly at night. Oh, there's bound to be a brutal fight scene or execution around the next corner, but there isn't anything that makes you care about what's going on. Okay, I don't watch a Miike film for the characterisation, but at least ICHI THE KILLER had tons of incident and AUDITION's slow build worked when matched with THAT ending.
This one's predictable in the extreme, I couldn't care less about the characters, and the whole 'stone face' type of acting is just a bit dull. Miike tries to spice things up with a sex scene here and a mutilation there, but it isn't enough; for much of the running time, I was simply bored. DEADLY OUTLAW: REKKA does have the same kind of hustle and vibe as the early gangster films of Beat Takeshi, but it lacks their finesse and raw power. Attempts to make it feel like an old-fashioned grindhouse movie of the 1970s don't really gel either; instead this movie is both slight and forgettable.
Instead it has more in common with low budget art-house fare, featuring interchangeable characters and some padded scenes of characters wandering the streets aimlessly at night. Oh, there's bound to be a brutal fight scene or execution around the next corner, but there isn't anything that makes you care about what's going on. Okay, I don't watch a Miike film for the characterisation, but at least ICHI THE KILLER had tons of incident and AUDITION's slow build worked when matched with THAT ending.
This one's predictable in the extreme, I couldn't care less about the characters, and the whole 'stone face' type of acting is just a bit dull. Miike tries to spice things up with a sex scene here and a mutilation there, but it isn't enough; for much of the running time, I was simply bored. DEADLY OUTLAW: REKKA does have the same kind of hustle and vibe as the early gangster films of Beat Takeshi, but it lacks their finesse and raw power. Attempts to make it feel like an old-fashioned grindhouse movie of the 1970s don't really gel either; instead this movie is both slight and forgettable.