durruti

"Dead or Alive"-directed by Takashi Miike(Cornerhouse)

This film was the first screening in our modern Japanese film course.The only other film of Miikes' I have seen is the excellent and horrible "Audition", which might put the faint hearted off dating for life.

"Dead or Alive" is a Yakuza movie, and an extremely violent and unpleasant one at that. The story involves feuding (and racist) Chinese and Japanese gangs, and the corruption of a policeman who is drawn into extortion by poverty and a family crisis. The initial scenes are a breathless high octane mix of cut-up massacres, strippers and thrash metal, and although the movie slows down and becomes more ordered it doesn't become more pleasant, quite the reverse.

There is a completely superfluous beastiality scene involving a dog, a gay rape and murder, and worst of all a scene in which a newly employed barmaid is drugged up to the eyeballs and laid wallowing in a pool of her own shit (presumably after being given enemas).She is then drowned in the mess when gang boss stands on her chest and forces her head under the surface.

The film is pretty amazing in its own way-completely mad,breathless and hyper-sexual,but some of the scenes are so degrading that I found parts of it sickening