Dead or Alive: Hanzaisha (1999)

Director:

Takashi Miike

Writer:

Ichiro Ryu (writer)

Release Date:

27 November 1999 (Japan)

Genre:

Crime | Drama | Thriller

Tagline:

WARNING: This motion picture contains explicit portrayals of violence; sex; violent sex; sexual violence; clowns and violent scenes of violent excess, which are definitely not suitable for all audiences.

Plot:

A yakuza of Chinese descent and a Japanese cop each wage their own war against the Japanese mafia. But they are destined to meet. Their encounter will change the world.

Plot Keywords:

Mafia | Detective | Yakuza | Massacre | Taiwan

Awards:

2 wins

Cast

Riki Takeuchi	...	Ryuuichi
Shô Aikawa	...	Det. Jojima
Renji Ishibashi	...	Aoki
Hitoshi Ozawa	...	Satake
Shingo Tsurumi	...	Chen
Kaoru Sugita	...	Mrs. Jojima
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Dankan	...	Tanaka
Hirotaro Honda
Michisuke Kashiwaya	...	Toji
Mizuho Koga
Ryûshi Mizukami
Ren Ôsugi	...	Yan (as Ren Oosugi)
Tomorowo Taguchi
Susumu Terajima	...	Inoue
Hua Rong Weng
Kyôsuke Yabe
Yoshiyuki Yamaguchi

Also Known As:

D.O.A. (Japan) (short title)
Dead or Alive (USA)

MPAA:

Rated R for strong violence, sexuality, language and drug use. (edited version)

Runtime:

105 min

Country:

Japan

Language:

Mandarin | Japanese

Colour:

Colour

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Argentina:16 | Netherlands:16 | Australia:R | Canada:18+ (Quebec) | France:-16 (with warning) | Germany:18 | Japan:R-15 | New Zealand:R18 | Sweden:15 | UK:18 | USA:R (edited version) | USA:Unrated

Company:

Daiei Motion Picture Company

Quotes:

Psychotic Beggar: I choose you, Pikachu!
[the beggar proceeds to beat the crap out of the policemen]

Movie Connections:

References The Fugitive (1993)

This movie rocks!

I have no other way to say it: this movie was brilliant! When I saw it last week at the Rotterdam Film Festival, I was completely blown away! And I wasn't the only one... Several other people at the theater actualy gave a (well deserved) standing ovation! This movie was just extraordinary. Not Miiki Takashi's best work (that would be Audition), but certainly one of his most enjoyable and fun flicks! I am amazed that the director is so unknown outside of Japan, because he really is a genius, inventing cinema all over again. He is only in the movie making business for about four years, but already has a body of work that counts no less than 15 movies which are all original and perfect in their own way. In Japan he is well known and is counted to the film avantgarde, but none of his movies really got a wide cinema distribution. Most of his movies are relatively low budget and made for TV, Video or small cinema release. Maybe this gives him the freedom to constantly re-invent himself and push the limit of movie-making in general and perverse, cruel detail in perticular.

Now back to Dead or Alive. The first ten minutes are just breathtaking and eccentric. But after this the movie pulls back into a more conventional Yakuza vs. Cop story, only to go completely over the top at the end. The end effectively blows up every genre convention and just HAS to be seen to be believed.

The basic story is, like I said, quite conventional and simple; a cop tries to solve a case of a group of hitman who have robbed an armored truck. This of course can not be done without getting personally involved and if that wasn't hard enough, he has some grave family trouble too, because his daughter needs an operation which he can not pay. Meanwhile the leader of the killer group is reunited with his younger brother he raised, who does not know anything about his profession. The kid brother tough is destined to choose sides once he finds out that blood money payed for his college education abroad. Meanwhile the band of killers gets involved in a yakuza gang war, fighting over a drug cartel.

The middle part, in which the story unfolds, is shown with very little action and at moments can be compared to the calm style of Takeshi Kitano. But Takashi's signature is always very clear, and there are a lot of small perverse elements that illustrate his tendency to push it to the limit. There is a scene, for example, where a gangster kills a girl by drowning her in a kiddy pool filled with her own poop. But over all the story is told in a very compassionate way, sometimes balancing on the edge of melodrama, but never getting too sentimental because there always is a certain ironic detatchment. Despite this sometimes Kitanoesque detatchment and calm, the movie succeeds in making you really care for and relate to the charakters. I think this really is a big accomplishment. Finally combining this more conventional, 'humane' crime/drama story with the outrageousness of the beginning and the end, and making this combination work, shows how brilliant Takeshi really is. A director that has to be watched carefully!

10 out of 10