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Robocop meets Agitator in the world of Takeshi Kitano - impossible to pin down!, 1 Mar 2008
As you can probably gather from the title, Full Metal Yakuza (1997) is one of director Takashi Miike's most polarising and defiantly idiosyncratic works. Essentially a straight to video project - produced at a time when the market for straight to video pictures in Japan was at its most financially successful - the film imaginatively blends together elements of the director's more iconic and eclectic Yakuza genre films, such as Osaka Tough Guys (1995) and Fudoh: The New Generation (1996), with elements of Paul Verhoeven's classic American science-fiction satire, Robocop (1987). As with the majority of Japanese V-cinema, Full Metal Yakuza offered Miike creative free reign; with explicit, over-the-top bloodshed and sexual violence interspersed with moments of black comedy, pathos, and continual references to old Hollywood monster movies, such as Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll. All of this is naturally delivered on a minuscule budget that seemingly left little room for convincing make-up effects, or indeed, CGI.
Harsher critics of the film often cite such budgetary restrictions - as well as the absurd, almost farcical nature of the plot - as the defining factors for this films supposed failure and its irrelevance within the context of Miike's career. However, supporters of the film, such as myself and other such online admirers, tend to enjoy the film for these very same reasons; with the limited budget and obvious lo-fi quality of the effects adding to the overall enjoyment; with the film managing to encapsulate the very best qualities of low-budget filmmaking such as boldness, fun, originality and imagination.
However, having said that, this is very much a film of three distinct parts, and the enjoyment of each specific segment will obviously depend heavily upon the individual taste of the viewer. The first part is probably the easiest to appreciate, as it is the most dramatic of the three and the more focused, with none of the tongue-in-cheek humour or references to cult sci-fi cinema that will appear later. In some respects it brings to mind some of Miike's more routine, run-of-the-mill Yakuza/crime pictures, such as the aforementioned Osaka Tough Guys and the great Young Thugs: Nostalgia (1998), as well as somewhat pre-empting the style and tone of later films like Rainy Dog (1997), Ley Lines (1999) and Agitator (2001). As with Robocop itself, this first segment illustrates the rise and eventual fall of the central character (in this case, an inept Yakuza underling), as he attempts to protect his boss and mentor from a fatal double-cross carried out by his own men in conjunction with a rival gang. Its perhaps the most successful part of the film for most viewers as it features no low-tech special effects or attempts at obvious shock-value; instead, drawing us in through the characters and the strong performances from the likes of Tsuyoshi Ujiki (as our seemingly inept protagonist), Takeshi Caesar and Koji Tsuk | |
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