Dead or Alive
dir. Miike
Opens Fri Feb 22
Clinton Street Theater
So I went to elementary school with this kid named Jimmy Fain. He was famous for eating 12 bowls of chili, sniffing a dead frog, and up-chucking the whole mess on the playground. He would also would stand perfectly still and allow any interested parties to kick him in the nuts. In fact, he was like that all through highschool, until he accidentally killed this guy while joking around on a big piece of farm machinery. The point is, Jimmy Fain is the real-life equivalent to out-of-control director Takashi Miike. And I say “real-life” equivalent, because Mikke is faking it.
You may remember Miike from conversations with friends about this weird movie called Audition, where a girl lops off a guy’s leg with piano wire. Miike’s reputation precedes him with Dead or Alive, and he does his best not to disappoint.
The film opens with a dizzying montage of Tokyo drowning in its own excess: strippers, coke freaks, mobsters, sex-gluttons, and creative murderers. We’re introduced to the central characters; Jojima, a trying-hard-to-be-honest cop whose daughter needs an expensive operation, and Ryuichi, who is leading the Chinese mafia in a war against the old-school yakuza, while working to give his younger brother an education. Naturally, these two stories converge, leading to an all-encompassing shoot-out, and a spiritual battle for the true meaning of loyalty.
Heard that story before? Well, the main difference between it and those other movies are scenes which include a photographer staging a bestiality scene, and losing the dog; a man who gets stabbed in the jugular while pegging a male hooker in a toilet; and a mafia spy who gets high on horse and drowns in a pool of her own feces. Are those scenes worth it? For the most part, no. Other than being audacious, Miike isn’t bringing anything new to the table (although the ending is super-duper-DUPER audacious). He’s like the crazy guy at the party who’s fun to watch, but you’d never want to be his friend. Or, more specifically, he’s fun to watch until you realize he just wants attention. In other words, he may be crazy, but he’s no Jimmy Fain.
