Dead or Alive (Unrated Director's Cut)
by Takashi Miike
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Hitoshi Ozawa, Renji Ishibashi, Riki Takeuchi, Shô Aikawa, Shingo TsurumiDirector: Takashi Miike
Producer: Katsumi Ono
Producer: Makoto Okada
Producer: Masashi Minami
Producer: Mitsuru Kurosawa
Producer: Toshiki Kimura
Producer: Tsutomu Tsuchikawa
Writer: Ichiro Ryu
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); Japanese (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 105 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-05-27
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Kino Video
Movie Reviews of Dead or Alive (Unrated Director's Cut)
Movie Review: Oh yeah!
Summary: 5 Stars
All I can say about Takashi Miike is "Thank God!" O.k., I can and will say more about him than that, but those two words will probably sum up your impressions of the man's film work. You groaned in abject horror over the horrific, piano wire denouement of "Audition." You swore off drinking milk and nearly lost your lunch over the warped portrayal of domesticity gone wrong in "Visitor Q." You couldn't do much of anything except sit in open-mouthed awe during the string of grotesque oddities that constituted "Ichi the Killer." And now you're about to embark on an intriguing exploration of the world of the Yakuza in "Dead or Alive." Welcome to the depraved world of Japanese auteur Takashi Miike. Anyone remotely familiar with the peculiar institution of Japanese filmmaking probably knows about this director by now. If not, you're missing out on something quite amazing. I won't say you will understand everything you see in a Miike opus; watching one of his films through western eyes is bound to cause a serious case of severe cultural dissonance. But that doesn't mean you won't have one heck of a time trying to figure it all out.
The first ten or so minutes of "Dead or Alive" slightly misleads the viewer. Through a series of quick cuts, pounding rock music, and extremely violent imagery Miike sets you up for a sit on the edge of your seat thriller. You've got a woman taking a nosedive out of a building, a nauseating encounter in a bathroom, a guy scarfing down bowl after bowl of noodles, exotic dancers gyrating in the background, and a gang gunning down a bunch of mobsters. What does it all mean? It's Miike's way of not just grabbing your attention, but slapping you silly until you simply MUST pay attention. It turns out that Ryuuichi (Riki Takeuchi) and his band of merry pranksters bears the responsibility for most of this violence. He's a Japanese guy born in China which, in the social hierarchy of Japan, means he's nothing. That also means he's got nothing to lose by starting a war between the Japanese Yakuza and the Chinese Triads in Yokohama as a means to take over the drug trade. Unfortunately for the gangster, the stoic and meticulous Detective Jojima (Sho Aikawa) is hot on his trail. It's a showdown between two obstinate souls that threatens to turn the streets red with blood.
Miike does an interesting thing after the initial mayhem runs its course; he slows the movie down to a snail's pace. Sandwiched between the slam-bang opening and the insane showdown at the end, "Dead or Alive" focuses on telling the personal stories of these two men. Miike doesn't leave us completely out to dry, of course, as he gives us plenty of disgusting weirdness to tide us over in the meantime. One of the goons in the film gets his kicks by hiring harridans to wallow in a wading pool filled with...well, watch and see. We also meet one of Jojima's informants, a man involved in filming...well, watch and see. Geez, I can't mention any of the over the top cringe elements in "Dead or Alive"! But I can talk about Jojima and Ryuuichi. The police officer's job is his reason for being as he loves to make the streets safer for society, but his family life drifts as a result. He doesn't communicate well with his wife or his offspring. Worse, his daughter is very sick and needs an enormously expensive operation, an operation so pricey that it will force the cop to take desperate measures to save her life. As for Ryuuichi, his existence as a non-Japanese Japanese, so to speak, ensures that he will always live on the fringes of society. His relationship with a smart younger brother interested in school threatens to implode when the boy discovers what Ryuuichi does for a living.
The final scenes of "Dead or Alive" take the film in an entirely different direction that definitely made me smile (check out that car dropping out of the sky), but found me scratching my head in wonderment. Really, folks--you simply won't believe how the movie ends. It's so over the top that it outdoes nearly every other over the top conclusion in cinematic history. How did the conflict suddenly assume global implications? Perhaps Miike is making a statement about good versus evil? Whatever the case, I thoroughly enjoyed the film. I thought both of the primary actors (Aikawa and Takeuchi) did a fine job in what is essentially a low budget action flick. It must have been difficult to create sympathetic characters in a film featuring some of the sick stuff we see here, but Miike and his actors accomplish that very thing. Two sequels to this film arrived on the scene shortly after, neither of which I have seen yet. Based on my experiences with the first installment, the other two ought to be massively entertaining.
Surprisingly, you get more than a few extras on the "Dead or Alive" disc. There are the typical trailers for this film and a few others, production notes, and an interview with Miike. I liked this little discussion because we hear the director talk about the popularity of the two leads cast in the film. Apparently, Sho Aikawa and Riki Takeuchi are quite popular in their native Japan. Miike wanted to play on that popularity with the film, not necessarily in a monetary sense (although that was definitely a consideration), but in how the two men played their roles. Takashi Miike makes anywhere from five to ten films a year, as amazing as that sounds, and "Dead or Alive" is one of the best ones I've seen from him. Give it a shot if you've got the stomach for it.
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