Yatterman

 

Takashi Miike is a great director when he’s on the ball, but it has to be said that some of his films tend to come out lacking. The man has directed something like a hundred movies, averaging two or three a year, so there is a definite divide between the good ones and the bad ones. Oddly it’s the seemingly bigger budget, more mainstream films of his that turn out to be the weaker ones. When he’s got creative control and seemingly modest budgets he pumps out all sorts of amazing weirdness, but when it seems he has to adhere to more strict rules and guidelines his films tend to be a bit weak, often lacking his sense of style and excess. Yatterman is one of the weaker ones, despite the apparent budget and great style and technical polish. It’s a strange movie, but not in the same way Miike’s better films tend to be. At times it seems to capture what I assume to be the spirit of the source material, being like a fun live-action cartoon, but otherwise it’s all over the place with a fluctuating tone, nothing plot, failed humour, some annoying characters and an overall messiness that prevents the random parts of the movie from coming together well. It’s a shame because I actually enjoy a lot of the movie – it can be fun if you can tolerate it’s cringe worthy parts- but those off parts drag it down and make it weaker as a whole, leaving Yatterman only an ok movie at best.

Yatterman is a film adaptation of a seventies anime series of the same name. From what I can tell it was an old Japanese Saturday Morning cartoon series about a masked crime fighting duo named Yatterman. That’s essentially what the movie is about, but it seems to assume the audience is familiar with the cartoon. It’s actually a really good looking movie. While some of the CGI is unconvincing (I hate Toybotty) a lot of it works, and the physical props look great, like oversized toys. The action scenes tend to be fun as well. What brings it all down is how absolutely dull and horrible the writing, dialogue and characters tend to be. While some characters are weird and wacky, for the most part things are dull as hell. It has a weird problem with tone, at times seeming to match the energetic wackiness of a live-action cartoon, while at other times it gets oddly dull and serious. It alternates from moments of fun to dragged-out awkward parts. All in all it doesn’t quite work.

 

Gan Takada and his girlfriend Ai work together in a toy store. Secretly, they’re actually a crime fighting duo known as Yatterman, with Gan as Yatterman 1 and Ai as Yatterman 2. They operate out of an underground toy factory with their giant dog-shaped mecha Yatterwoof and their annoying little robot helper Toybotty. They constantly fight against the villainously useless Doronbo Gang. Lead by the sexy/stupid Doronjo, and her two goofy sidekicks Boyacky and Tonzra, the gang constantly attempt idiot schemes to beat Yatterman, mostly by building giant evil robots using money they make through various scams. They take orders from Skullobey, the mysterious God of Thieves.

Both team Yatterman and the Doronbo Gang are vying for the pieces of the Skull Stone, a mystical object that, if put together, is said to cause a miracle to happen for the user. As the pieces are found, things around the world begin to disappear. Gan and Ai are accompanied by Shoko, a sullen girl whose father, renowned archaeologist Dr Kaieda, went missing searching for pieces of the Skull Stone. Things get further complicated for everybody when Gan accidentally kisses Doronjo, creating a strange love triangle that causes tension among both teams.

The story is barely there and unimportant, more of an excuse to have the various actions scenes. This means a lot of the movie is based around the characters interacting with each other, which is a problem because that also happens to be the weakest part of the movie. We never actually learn anything important about Gan or Ai, and so we never really care about them or what happens to them. When they start doing the ‘Gan and Ai’s relationship is in trouble’ nonsense you won’t care because you never cared about them from the beginning. Gan is a total idiot. He’s stupid, impulsive, is completely unable to read the mood or understand other people’s feelings and has an idiot’s sort of enthusiasm to everything. Most of the character drama is because of him. Ai, on the other hand, is immensely dull, her entire character just involving her supporting and following Gan. She has almost no personality. Doronjo, on the other hand, is more fun but highly insecure because she wants to find a boyfriend and get married. She ends up falling for Gan, which leads to a weird love triangle subplot that goes nowhere. Of all the characters she’s the only one to get some actual development. Her flunkies offer weird comic relief that might offer a chuckle or two, but even they make things awkward at times as some of the humour really doesn’t work, either being too obvious, too immature or simply not funny.

The movie spends way more time with is villains than with its heroes. I’d say we spend maybe double the time hanging out with the Doronbo gang than we do with team Yatterman. I do have to say though that the Doronbo gang is more interesting, since the scenes with just Team Yatterman and Shoko are often boring. Speaking of Shoko, she’s is just so horrible and boring and easily the weakest part of the movie. She’s sullen and spends all her time moping about how her father has disappeared. She sucks the light-hearted joy out of the movie whenever she appears. I have to say despite the lack of characterisation or development for most of the characters, most of the actors really give it their all. In particular the villains seem to be having a lot of fun. The heroes less so.  Gan does pretty good as the bumbling heroic idiot, while Ai mostly gets upset with him and Shoko has nothing to do but mope around.

The Doronbo scams are absurd, if only because they seem to have required far too much actual work and effort to really be scams. One of them involves making wedding dresses and selling them. That’s literally the entire ‘scam’. Another involves overcharging for sushi at a sushi train restaurant by tricking people, but to get to that point they had to actually open and run a successful sushi restaurant. It seems like a lot of actual effort into running legitimate businesses before they pull the scam. Outside of that, they don’t really do much. The main plot is essentially a McGuffin hunt (‘let’s find the magic thing for reasons!’) which isn’t very interesting at all. You won’t care about it, and the film doesn’t seem to care either.

The movie is pretty self-aware, constantly breaking the fourth wall and occasionally poking fun at its own nonsense and source material (there’s a line that “Yatterman fights crime every Saturday morning at six o’clock” that seems to reference the show). There are a few scenes that show how uncomfortable it must be to ride around in a mecha, how utterly weird/pointlessly bizarre everything is and how little characters seem to notice or care that their antics are insane (a few scenes of team Yatterman being enthusiastic about something ridiculous or dangerous are juxtaposed by Shoko looking on in horror). Everybody fights with toys or absurd and ridiculous weapons. In fact the manic style is endearing in its own way – that part actually sort of works. It just doesn’t really fit with anything else. It’s often dull in its character moments, and the actual story is nothing but time wasting with no real sense of adventure or danger.

The movie has a big problem with tone. For the most part it’s light and silly, like the live-action cartoon it’s meant to be, but sometimes it gets oddly sullen (I blame Shoko). It’s also ridiculously sexual. Everything to do with Doronjo is risqué (her outfit is basically comprised of leather and fishnet stockings, and she’s the focus of some pervy shots). For a kid’s/family movie (or at least something based on a kid’s cartoon) there’s a lot of really inappropriate stuff going on. One of the Doronbo Gang’s robots is in the shape of a woman with giant breasts and elongated nipples (they’re machine guns). Actually everything about the lady robot fight scene is absurdly sexual, from the moans it makes, the way it fondles its robot breasts to fire guns and even how it ends up being defeated. It’s not something comfortable to watch, and not something you’d want kids to see and it gives an odd flavour to things. I actually don’t really know if referring to it as a kid’s movie is the right thing to do, since it really hard to tell who it’s meant for – some aspects seemed aimed at children (ugh, Toybotty) who wouldn’t be familiar with the source material, while a lot of the jokes are adult-orientated (there is a lot of innuendo and sex jokes) and the entire film seems full of references made for those familiar with the series. This uneven tone does cause problems, since a lot of it is overly childish. I actually can’t tell who the movie is meant to be targeted to.

It’s a movie brought down by small things. The weird emotional love triangle thing boils over weirdly, descending into silly drama before the characters actually decide to move on with it and pretend it never happened, making the already dull story even more of a non-entity. The fetch quest for skull pieces doesn’t really matter at all, and even the ending is weak (thanks to Shoko). There’s a fair amount of annoying nonsense as well. Toybotty, the stupid looking CGI robot, flits around the screen ending every sentence with ‘botty’. This is annoying. Similarly evil Skullobey ends every sentence with ‘obey’. This is also annoying.

Stylistically, it’s colourful and ridiculous and I quite liked it. I found the high colour palette appealing and I really liked the ridiculously silly designs of the various secret bases, full of giant nonsense gears and oversized tools. Even better was the inside of the evil Chef-based mecha, which just had a microwave and blender. There’s a lot of weird silly nonsense going on. The Doronjo gang sing a song with bad choreography about how they like being evil. The Yatterman duo sing a song about being the Yatterman duo. Both are odd and a little out of place (and also too long). A lot of the movie is exactly like that - at times its energy and humour does work, but more often than not it doesn’t, being either too awkward, childish or just not funny. It also doesn’t really feel much like a Takashi Miike film, lacking some of his signature style and film making work. While there are moments that are Miike-ish, for the most part it seems completely different to the movies he typically makes.

Yatterman is an odd movie, even in Miike’s filmography. It’s mostly colourful, vibrant and ridiculous, but the bad script, those few dull/annoying characters and its weird tonal shifts make it so much weaker. Depending on your appreciation of cartoon nonsense and your tolerance of its problems, it can still be a fun movie but it never rises above being average. I am curious as to how I would’ve felt about the film if I was familiar with the original cartoon – I can’t tell how faithful to the original the characters or overall style are, not that I think it’d change my opinion on the film much.

Merantau

Merantau is basically an Indonesian version of Ong-Bak, but worse. It’s slower paced and has far fewer action sequences, which are shorter and less interesting. It has a grim focus and just lacks the sense of fun of that movie. It’s the first collaboration between Welsh director Gareth Evans and Indonesian martial artist Iko Uwais, the duo who would later go on to give us absolutely amazing action classics ‘The Raid’ and ‘The Raid 2: Berandal’. In that respect, Merantau is just the rough, early groundwork for a director, filmmakers and actors who had never made an action movie before – they built on and improved on everything here to make The Raid as good as it is. Of course, that means that Merantau itself isn’t as good in comparison – the groundwork in terms of cinematography, editing, camerawork and choreography can be seen here, but it’s not to par with what would come later.

Young martial artist Yuda leaves his small Sumatran village to go on a journey into Jakarta as a right-of-passage (or ‘merantau’). He arrives in the bustling city with no money and no job prospects, and quickly finds himself homeless. Within hours of making it into Jakarta, Yuda ends up saving teenaged Astri and her little brother Ajit from human traffickers, gaining the ire of local sex trade mob boss Ratger. Yuda then makes it his mission to protect them from Ratger’s goons.

It really is a lot like Ong-Bak actually, especially in terms of plot and even specific action beats. In fact I’d just say that the movie is really just a more serious, inferior Indonesian version of Ong-Bak. The similarities are astounding; they both involve a young martial artist from the sticks heading into the sleazy big city and finding the dark underbelly. While Ong Bak draped its action and stunts in a pulpy tale about a crime boss stealing Buddha statues, Merantau goes darker, concerning itself with the underground sex trade.  Ong Bak had a similar sort of weird grimness hiding just under the surface (there’s that part where a girl is forced to OD on cocaine and dies), but Merantau goes so much darker. The movie doesn’t pull punches, particularly about the sex trade. The implications of a cotton-tip test are very uncomfortable. It’s a grim and unfair world out there, and Merantau makes sure its characters know this. Yuda has a much rougher time, getting the crap beaten out of him a fair bit, while Astri has a rough time in a different way.

A big part of the problem is the tone and pace. It’s really bleak all things considered, with its blunt focus on the sex trade. It has a very slow pace, with it really taking until the final twenty minutes for the action to really kick in. It focuses a lot on the villains, like the angry, sleazy Ratger and his second in command Luc, who have a really weird relationship (best friends who also happen to kidnap/rape girls for a living?), but these scenes don’t really do much to make them interesting, nor do they add much to the already thin plot. Yayan Ruhian, who played Mad Dog and Prakoso in The Raid and The Raid 2 respectively (and choreographed both films), appears here as Eric, a man who, like Yuda, had headed into Jakarta for his right-of-passage only to become a criminal. He’s meant to be the rough reflection of Yuda, something the movie only barely looks at or considers – it never questions or delves into Yuda’s determination to do the right thing.

The fight scenes are, for the most part, brief and a bit plain. It takes until the end for the film to really hit its stride with fast, brutal action choreography, but before then it’s nothing special. There are highlights, like a claustrophobic fight in an elevator and the finale at a shipping yard, but otherwise they’re fairly plain and short. The martial art on display this time is Pencak Silat, an Indonesian martial art, and it’s interesting to see in action, with a seemingly more free-form movement than other martial arts. White guys don’t really make for particularly interesting final bosses in Asian action flicks. They often don’t have the moves or the presence to be entertaining. They might be taller and more muscular, but in combat they’re just less interesting, often lacking the limber athleticism and flexibility of their Asian opponents. Ratger is no different – apart from being a head taller than Iko Uwais he’s just a white guy throwing punches and kicks, same with his second in command Luc. The final fight is good though, finally getting to that fast, brutal combat seen in The Raid, but it’s too late and too brief.

I actually wonder if I would have liked Merantau better if I hadn’t had seen Ong-Bak and The Raid first. While it is possible, I don’t think my opinion would have changed too much – the pace is fairly slow and the grim subject manner and bleak tone sucks a lot of the fun out of it. It does have a few good action beats, but compared to those other films it’s plain and disappointing. If it is one good thing that Merantau gives us, it’s that it lead to The Raid and The Raid 2 being made, both of which I’d heartily recommend, along with the first Ong-Bak, over Merantau.

Ong-Bak

Ong-Bak: Muay Thai Warrior is an absolutely awesome Thai action movie which launched the career of Thai action star Tony Jaa and started a trend of Thai martial arts movies, giving us films like The Protector and Bangkok Knockout. Ong-Bak remains the absolute best of the bunch; it’s seriously a really fun, exciting movie, and gets my full approval (whatever that’s worth), sporting great action and amazing stunts. It’s a great movie that spawned two sequels of vastly varying quality. I’ll be covering all three of them, starting with the first, and best.

After artefact smugglers steal the head of an ancient Buddha statue, the titular Ong-Bak, from a poor rural village in Thailand, young Muay Thai fighter Ting (Tony Jaa) volunteers to head to Bangkok to retrieve it. Ting, unsure of where to begin his search and naïve to the harshness of city life, meets up with his cousin Hum Lae, who has become a hustler and con artist with his partner Muay. While initially attempting to con his ‘country bumpkin’ cousin, Humlae agrees to help him find the head after seeing how amazing a fighter he is (and planning to exploit him in underground fights).

Despite the simplicity of the main premise (it’s seriously ‘go find the head’) a lot of stuff goes on, with sub-plots involving gambling, underground fight clubs and drug abuse. While most characters are the same from the beginning to the end (Ting’s ‘development’ just involves punching more guys), Hum Lae actually does get character development and something of an arc, which actually works pretty well (especially considering he’s mostly the comic relief). It’s all flavouring for the action scenes, with the plot more of an action delivery system.

Like the best action movies, each scene is a showcase for the skills and athleticism of its star, and Tony Jaa does not disappoint. While the man is incapable of emoting or conveying any sort of drama and lacks a knack for comedy, he does know how to deliver a flying knee to the head. He’s athletic, showing off impressive flips and kicks like nothing else. It’s a showcase for Muay Thai, Thailand kickboxing that utilises knees and elbows for violent effect, and the film shows it off in big brutal style (getting an elbow to the head seems like the most painful thing ever).

The film begins in energetic style with a competition where a few dozen men attempt to climb a massive tree and retrieve a flag from the top while fighting each other, and it only gets better from there. The film has it all from energetic chase scenes, brutal fist fights and even a rickshaw taxi chase. The variety is the real joy, with every action scene being different and inventive. The absolute best part of the film has to be a foot chase where Ting jumps, flips and weaves through various obstacles at high speed (often captured in several different camera angles). It’s some seriously impressive stuff (like him sliding while doing the splits underneath a car).

 

Ong-Bak is, all up, really great. It has an awesome energy, great stunts (all done for real!) and exciting fights, and is easily one of the best action flicks of its time. It’s essentially what opened the gates for Malaysian action films, paving the way for others like it, though Ong-Bak remains the best for my money.

If you can, find the original Thai Uncut version since its easily the best version of the movie. The International Cut removes subplots, shortens fight scenes, cuts the more violent parts and, the absolute worst offense, changes all the music which completely ruins the action scenes. The Australian Eastern Eye special edition has both versions. 

Ong-Bak 2: The Beginning is a strange movie for a number of reasons. For one thing, Tony Jaa himself steps behind the camera. Even stranger is what Ong Bak 2 is – it’s a prequel, but set several hundred years before its predecessor and not dealing even remotely with any of the characters, places or things from the first film. It’s a much different film from its predecessor, for good and bad, but, while fun, ultimately the film isn’t anywhere near as good as the first, though it is still an entertaining action film.

Set in feudal 15^th century Siam, the story concerns itself with Tien (Tony Jaa), a young boy who, after his noble parents are killed by the power-hungry Lord Rajasena, becomes a street urchin. He’s quickly welcomed into the Garuda Wing Cliff, a mercenary group of assassins run by the respected and renowned Chernang who adopts him and puts him through various tests and trials to toughen him up and turn him into a master fighter, with the prodigious Tien becoming one of the greatest fighters of them all. His training complete, Tien turns his attentions towards revenge on Lord Rajasena, who has grown even more powerful. 

The majority of the film is about Tien learning to fight and becoming a mercenary before it suddenly rushes to its massive climax. As a result there isn’t much to the story beyond the early scenes – Lord Rajasena isn’t much of a presence at all beyond that, and the quest for revenge only figures into a few minutes of the film. The film also ends on an abrupt cliff-hanger sequel hook after a particularly big, bloody and exciting finale where Tien fights and kills a small army of opponents.

There is a lot more blood and gore here, and a bigger emphasis on weapons. Most action scenes involve various types of blades, with heads severed, throats slit and bellies split. Tien uses an insane number of different weapons here, to the point where his training with the mercenaries seems to involve every single type of weapon and martial art ever. It’s a more serious film, and doesn’t have the more light-hearted fun of the first film, but I can’t fault the action. While it doesn’t have the stunts and chase scenes of the first film, the various sword fights and battles are really quite awesome. The variety in weapons and styles is also awesome, showing off stuff we don’t tend to see in most other action films. The switch to a historical setting gives way to more historical-looking sets and costumes, which are all quite nice actually. Traditional clothes and jewellery are impressive, with the film having a unique feel.

All in all, Ong-Bak 2 is an entertaining movie, but it just isn’t as good or as entertaining as its predecessor. The action is great fun and the overall look and production design is all quite great, but the story is almost non-existent, the writing is horrible, the serious tone takes the fun out of most of it and it just lacks the qualities that made the first film so fantastic. Ong-Bak 2 is a very different beast though, and while some of those differences don’t pan out, some do make it stand out somewhat. The ending itself is disappointing as an abrupt sequel-baiting cliff-hanger, which also leads into the final Ong-Bak film.

Ong Bak 3 is about Tony Jaa becoming Jesus Christ. I’m not joking. The finale in the trilogy, of which two titles are prequels, Ong Bak 3 is where things fall apart. While the first is fantastic and the second is fun, the third is disappointingly dull and uninteresting. It’s also gets very weird, with writer/director/star Tony Jaa making a film where he dies, is resurrected, becomes enlightened and becomes a messiah by saving the world – though he spends most of the film either incapacitated or meditating.

Taking place immediately at the end of Ong-Bak 2, Tien (Tony Jaa) is captured by the villainous Lord Rajasena and is tortured, crippled and beaten to death. Villagers retrieve his body and take it back to the village. Once there they wrap him in twine and construct a Buddha statue for him (which ends up being the statue from the first film, finally actually tying this two-part ‘prequel’ to the first film). A few days later, he emerges from his wrappings alive but crippled. With the teachings of a Buddhist monk and the love and help of a dancing girl, Tien rehabilitates and becomes enlightened. He also wears white robes and grows a beard and spends his time meditating and philosophising.

The Crow Ghost (a villainous, supernatural character who only appeared in the last five minutes of Ong-Bak 2) kills and usurps Lord Rajasena and takes control, enslaving the villagers and killing those who oppose him. Tien, now enlightened, has to save the day and finally put an end to the Crow Ghost’s evil.

Ong Bak 3 is easily the weakest of the three and is the only one I’d consider bad. It’s slow, there’s less action and the action itself is less interesting than in the preceding two films. It has a bigger focus on philosophy and Buddhism (there’s a twenty minute chunk of the film devoted to it, involving Tien’s resurrection, rehabilitation and enlightenment), which really doesn’t fit with the punching and kicking when it eventually happens. It’s just not as interesting or entertaining and, if you want to get right down to it, becomes downright boring at times.

The sudden switch to full-on supernatural is jarring, considering there really wasn’t much of it in its immediate predecessor. There’s just so much focus on it this time through. Besides the Buddhist philosophy, there’re also curses, black magic and spirituality focusing heavily in the plot. The Crow Ghost is downright supernatural, able to conjure curses, use black magic and he even causes a solar eclipse. By the end Tien is supernatural as well, calling down a lighting strike at will. It’s a disappointing end to the series, and a really weird one. It really is about Tony Jaa becoming a Jesus Christ figure, which is about as weird a direction as you could take an action film.

And that’s the Ong-Bak trilogy. It’s a weird set of films put up against each other, especially since 2 and 3 go so off the rails and get strange. The first film is seriously amazing though, and well worth watching – it still stands up today and I wholeheartedly recommend it. The second film is fun but not on the same level on the first, though it’s more violent and the set and costume designs are quite interesting – it’s a fun watch. The third is the weakest and is just a bad movie – It’s only worth watching if you wanted closure on the second film.  

Imprint

 

 

Masters of Horror was a short lived horror-based anthology TV series that ran for two seasons in 2005 and 2006. Each episode is, essentially, an hour-long horror film directed by a ‘master of horror’, a loose term that encompassed everything from actual masters of horror (like John Carpenter and Dario Argento), lower budget horror stars (Stuart Gordon and Don Coscarelli), those whose output is more varied (John Landis and Joe Dante), and some random hacks (like series creator Mick Garris). The directors were given a lot of freedom, with fewer restrictions than most, and allowed to craft short horror films of their choosing.

The series was actually pretty decent with some absolute gems in there (John Carpenter and Dario Argento’s episodes prove they still have it) and also some trash, but on the whole the series was a lot of fun with a (mostly) interesting selection of directors showing off their stuff. And perhaps the most interesting one of them all would be Takashi Miike’s inclusion in the list. Already a controversial director, one has to imagine what exactly they thought they’d be getting by tagging him for an episode.

Miike’s episode, titled ‘Imprint’, was apparently deemed too disturbing by producer Mick Garris and the TV network. They requested edits to tone it down, Miike obliged but it was still considered too much, with concerns over the disturbing, graphic content and as such they never aired it – to this day it is apparently banned and has not been shown on television. They even released it separately from the Masters of Horror DVD box set. Funnily enough, Miike didn’t think he had pushed any boundaries, thinking everything he was doing was perfectly fine and acceptable.

So the question now is, controversial or not, is it any good? Let’s take a look.

Christopher (Billy Drago), an American journalist, had once travelled to Japan and fallen in love with a prostitute named Komomo. He promised to return, buy her freedom and take her back with him to America. Having finally returned to Japan, he’s spent a long time fruitlessly searching for her, finally tracking her down to a brothel on an isolated island. She isn’t there, and those that run the brothel claim that she’d never been there. Dejected, he nonetheless has to stay the night, as the boat only leaves in the morning. Stuck there, he chooses to spend the night with a mysterious disfigured girl for company. Slightly deranged, speaking of ghosts and demons, she claims that Komomo had been on the island, but had died. Distraught and drunk, Christopher asks her to tell him her story, and so she does, telling of her childhood, how she became a prostitute and how Komomo died. Unsatisfied with the story, Christopher demands to know the truth, deducing that she’s lying and leaving things out, and so she tells the story again, this time a much darker, more complete version. Every time she tells the story, the details get darker and more disturbing.

So how disturbing is it? Pretty freaking disturbing. It is legitimately messed up. And it’s not just the violence and torture, nor the themes, but the subject matter and how it’s shown. The subject matter it deals with is grim, and some of the visuals and imagery are horrific and a more than a little distressing (the things floating down the river alone are disturbing). It’s a (short) movie that will make you uncomfortable. This is some truly horrific stuff here and it’s easy to see why it was controversial and why it was banned from being shown on television.

Now for the weakest point - the acting is pretty atrocious. Billy Drago is not a man known for his acting (if you do know him, it’d be for his villain roles and not speaking parts). Here his timing is way off and ridiculous, sometimes instantly reacting to other character’s lines before they’ve had a chance to say them, and other times not reacting at all. Sometimes it’s really difficult to tell what emotions he’s meant to be showing, though I guess ‘drunk and delirious’ would cut it for most of it. The disfigured girl is a little better, though her delivery is a bit too forceful. The rest of the limited cast have a few issues – it’s a Japanese cast in an English-language movie and most obviously don’t speak English, so their delivery is stilted and their pronunciation is off.

 

 

The filmmaking itself is pretty decent. While the budget was obviously low, they make it work with a surprising variety of locales (despite being mostly confined to a single brothel room, flashbacks take us to the Japanese countryside). Costumes and set design is nice, with some typical Miike weirdness (one of the brothel managers is a syphilis-ridden midget with a dead chicken weaved into his hair). The effects, while mostly low budget, are really quite effective and horrific. The violence is bloody and gruesome, while the physical make-up is mostly great. Some of it is a little too fake, and as it reaches its conclusion potentially silly, but it’s still pretty freaky stuff. There’s a horrific torture scene that is painful to watch (somewhat similar to Audition’s torture scene). It doesn’t so much push boundaries as it completely ignores them, with a lot of the themes, subject matter and violence being far beyond what you’d ever expect to see on television.

While largely a visceral experience, it does also play tricks on the viewer – Christopher gets increasingly drunk and angry as time passes, with the things he sees possibly either being hallucinations or hauntings. It’s also vaguely hinted to a sinister background for Christopher, and a grim reason as to why he’s infatuated with Komomo. The themes and ideas are also strange, with every well-meaning character in flashbacks being revealed as horrible and cruel in truth. In fact, it’s hard to tell what is happening with the characters, be it how sane Christopher is or the disfigured girl’s obsession with hell. The ending is really weird and unexplained, and certainly open to interpretation.

Imprint works, is the crux of all this, even despite some of its issues. It is a bit of a strange outlier in Miike’s filmography in terms of filmmaking; it fits with Miike’s warped sensibilities and controversial output, but it also feels like he adapted his free-form style to fit what he thinks American audiences expect from horror film with how it’s shot – not in a bad way, the film works, but it definitely has a different feel to Miike’s Japanese horror works, like Audition and One Missed Call. When compared to the other Master of Horror episodes it sits with the better ones, and is easily the most disturbing of the bunch (which is saying something since some of them are really quite great). I’ve got the DVD copy of it, and it’s interesting to see the interviews and making-of stuff that show Miike in action – the dude just gets on with it and films the thing, an attitude that seems to fit his massive output.

Ichi the Killer

 

How the hell do I review Ichi the Killer? It’s a hard movie to really talk about, since the only way I can really think to describe it is as ‘a Takashi Miike film’, and you’ll either know instantly what that means or you’ll have no idea. Well, here goes anyway; it’s a Takashi Miike film, and probably his most iconic, violent and controversial – whenever Miike is mentioned or namechecked Ichi is mentioned as well, often along with Audition. It is a showcase of the style, themes and content of a very prolific director who has made everything from children’s films, videogame adaptations, documentaries, serious dramas and horror films. Ichi, however, is a Yakuza film, a very specific genre Miike has inhabited for decades.

It’s violent, gory, sadistic, depraved, psychotic and darkly funny with a morbid sense of humour. The plot is thin, the characters are weird and the ending is strange, unexplained and open to interpretation. It’s the sort of movie that’s hard to compare to anything, other than Miike’s other movies. There are traces of his earlier films in there, like Dead or Alive or Fudoh: The New Generation, but Ichi is exceptionally out there, focusing on sadists and masochists in a pretty blunt way. The film’s title appears in a puddle of semen after the titular Ichi masturbates while watching a pimp brutally beat and rape a prostitute. That opening, with its rapid editing and frantic music, really sum up what to expect from the film. It’s strange, brutal and uncompromising, and so thoroughly watchable it’s bizarre.

Jijii, a minor member in the Japanese criminal underworld, is instigating conflict between gangsters by manipulating Yakuza families into wiping each other out for his own personal gain. He does this by spreading rumours and misinformation, manipulating and using others while he remains an inconspicuous background presence. Jijii’s trump card is Ichi, a mentally unstable young man who he has conditioned, through hypnosis, false memories and aggressive coaxing, into becoming a psychotic killer – when Jijii needs somebody killed, he sends Ichi to do the job.

Kakihara is a sadomasochistic Yakuza enforcer, notorious for the tortures he inflicts and so whacked out that even his superiors in the Yakuza are afraid of him. When his boss goes missing (slaughtered by Ichi on Jijii’s orders), Kakihara begins a tortuous rampage to find him, the search becoming a hunt to find Ichi. Jijii continues to orchestrate things from behind the scenes, ultimately pitting Kakihara and Ichi against each other.

It’s a pretty thin story all things considered, with more of a focus on the strange characters and their quirks. It’s used as a vehicle for all the violent, wacky weirdness. The movie absolutely never takes itself seriously, which is why it works – the weird sense of humour that inhabits every scene largely defused the more horrific stuff. The strange, violent, cruel scenes are buoyed by the exceptionally dark, silly humour. It remains compellingly watchable, even at times where it seems to be aimless or unpleasant.  

While having a fairly straightforward story, the details and way it’s told and structured are anything but. There are random flashbacks for several characters, delusions, false memories (some which might actually be true) and so many weird, unanswered scenes and plot threads that seem open to interpretation. The exact reasons as to why Jijii is bringing down the Yakuza is never explained or even hinted to, nor is his particular hatred for Kakihara. Most characters have mysterious, hard to decipher motivations A few exceptionally brief scenes or fast edits bring up so many questions about story aspects that have seemingly no importance. It all leads to an exceptionally strange ending that is very much open to interpretation. As are the themes, if there are any – the meaning and importance of violence are certainly looked at and indulged, with characters that need it, loathe it and love it making up the cast.

 

There are no good guys here. Everybody is horrible, violent and cruel and nobody has any redeeming qualities. Even the ones that don’t seem to be horrible reveal themselves to be terrible in some way. Characters are depraved, mentally deranged, psychotic or just plain weird and wacky, running the gamut from junkies, prostitutes, corrupt cops and various Yakuza flunkies.

Kakihara is easily one of my favourite film psychopaths, and is really the heart and demented soul of the film. Heavily scarred, with a Glasgow smile (held together by piercings) and an odd sense of style, Kakihara, put simply, is the most fun character of the lot. He’s also just about the most violent and psychotic character here, in a film full of them, but he’s always enjoying himself and isn’t bogged down in the real-world concerns of others. Kakihara, when it gets right down to it, is just looking for somebody to hurt and even kill him – that’s why he becomes downright eager to meet and fight Ichi, and why the finale gets so strange. He’s played excellently by Tadanobu Asano, a Japanese actor with great comedic and dramatic talents (he was excellent as Genghis Kahn in Mongol).

Ichi is a pitiful and pathetic character, a whimpering, nervous wreck, prone to being bullied and, when he snaps, bursts into tears as he flips out and kills people. Ichi goes into battle wearing a ridiculous BMX armour body suit, his weapons being shoes with retractable blades in the heels. He gets sexually aroused by violence, but is a whimpering mess for the most part, Jijii’s hypnotic suggestions severely messing him up to the point where even Jijii thinks he’s gone too far.

The rest of the fairly robust cast are quirky and strange. Jijii is oddly complex, mostly due to his motivations being unclear, with the finale giving a ridiculous reveal. Kaneko, an ex-cop-turned gangster thug just trying to provide for his son, is the closest there is to a sane, reasonable person (though even he violently snaps at one point). The corrupt police twins Jiro and Saburo are probably my favourite for weirdness – one wants to know if you can pull somebody’s arm off if you yank it really hard (and tests his theory) while the other, in probably the height of weirdness, tracks down a wanted thug by putting on a pair of dog ears, sniffing the crotch of the guy’s favourite prostitute and then following the scent.

The violence is ridiculous, with big gushes of blood, spilled organs and severed limbs being commonplace. The more outlandish violence is even played as jokes, with a lot of the gory tableaus being so ridiculous, over the top and unrealistic as to be funny. Other acts of violence however are brutal, far more realistic and uncomfortable, such as some of the violence directed to women. A rival gangster is tortured, suspended with hooks run through his skin, has needles jammed through his cheeks and is scoured with boiling water. This is almost the least horrific thing to happen in the film, with the more brutal, prolonged and uncomfortable tortures happening to women (nipples + boxcutter is horrible). While a lot of the violence is shown in gruesome detail, in true Miike fashion it’s the sound design that really brutalises; much like the ending of Audition, the sound effects make it even more horrific so that even when we don’t see what is happening we wince because we can hear it.

It’s a well-made film, especially by Miike’s standards (considering the man largely works with little for a budget), full of creativity and style. It’s energetic and outlandish, with a lot of sudden explosions of gory violence amidst strange, inventive scenarios. The music and editing are notable as well, the former being full of strange tunes and weird, almost experimental beats. It’s weird and bizarre, with too many WTF moments to count, and so strangely watchable. It’s one of Miike’s best, and most iconic, movies, and considering the man has directed over ninety films (and looks to have no sign of stopping) that’s a pretty big statement.

The Treasure Hunter

The Treasure Hunter is a Taiwanese adventure movie strongly in the vein of the Hollywood adventure flick ‘The Mummy’. And it sucks. Treasure Hunter has an identity crisis. It doesn’t know what it’s about. Or, more specifically, it doesn’t know who it’s about. It tells several different small stories within the same brief narrative, never really bothering to flesh any of them out and constantly shifting focus between its multiple bland characters. At one point the movie seems to forget completely what its own plot is, with the central ‘treasure hunt’ being underwhelming and almost sorting itself out.

So what’s it all about? And who is it all about?  There’s Lan Ting, a woman authoring a book on desert legends whose father was a famous archaeologist. Her book details the legend of a hidden city holding a glorious treasure in the desert and the mysterious guardian clan that protects it. She’s kidnapped by treasure hunters led by the greedy Pork Rib, who wants to use her expertise and knowledge to decipher a map that supposedly leads to the hidden desert treasure city. Hua Dingbang, a famous archaeologist, joins them. His deal is that he led a former expedition to find the hidden city that ended in failure and the deaths of all his friends and now he has survivor’s guilt.

Then there’s Qiaofei, a treasure hunter/tomb raider who lives in a desert outpost and uses kung-fu to resolve disputes and fight the supernatural. Qiaofei was also childhood friends with Lan Ting so they do the whole ‘romance’ thing with the two. He’s hired to protect her/help her find the hidden city. Then there’s the Sandstorm Legion, the guardian clan who protects the desert and the treasure and fight off treasure hunters – they’re having a leadership dispute of sorts. Qiaofei is also involved with them, leading to all sorts of meaningless drama.

The movie sort of uselessly flits between all of this, with the vast majority of it being nothing more than useless flavouring. If anything, the story of Lan Ting, Qiaofei and the treasure is treated as a secondary concern to some of the side plots, most of which bog the film down. Everything to do with the inner-workings of the Sandstorm Legion could have been dropped completely and the film would have been tighter and more trim and organised. It’s baffling that the central part of the adventure, the hidden desert treasure, is largely ignored while character drama is worked out – there’s no real sense of urgency or momentum for a large chunk of the film. It kills the ‘adventure’ of this adventure movie.

Qiaofei is meant to be the Indiana Jones sort of character, and doesn’t quite work it. He’s confident and capable, but not particularly likeable due to his smugness. He’s played by Jay Chou, an odd actor in that his stone-faced acting either lends itself to really good roles (he’s great in Initial D and The Viral Factor) or really bad ones (he was dull as bricks in the Seth Rogen flick Green Hornet). His ‘relationship’ with Lan Ting never works because the two have no chemistry at all. He never seems interested in her. Speaking of Lan Ting, she’s just awful. The actress playing her is just a bad actress, almost pantomiming actions and coming across as whiny. Everybody else is shrug worthy. Pork Rib is the one-dimensional sleazy greedy guy and the Sandstorm Legion’s top brass are boringly righteous desert protectors. Hua Dingbang is melancholic with his disastrous guilt over his failed expedition, with his personal story further conflicting with the fluctuating tone of the film. At times it seems to want to be a fun romp of a desert adventure, but stuff like the Sandstorm Legion and Hua Dingbang take the light hearted fun out of the story, marooning it in tonally bland territory where half the cast seems lost.

The supernatural is in full force here, but the movie doesn’t really seem to react to it. There’s no surprise, shock or suspense there, it’s just treated as if it’s some sort of mundane occurrence. ‘Oh look, ghosts’, seems to be the muted response most characters have. The sense of mystery and wonder is also pretty much non-existent. Qiaofei acts almost bored and entirely unsurprised when a golem made out of sand possesses a suit of armour and attacks him.

The action scenes themselves are decent for what they are and pretty entertaining, but it feels like something is a little off with some of them, be it some shoddy CGI, some poor editing or limp choreography. Qiaofei uses kung-fu to fight the aforementioned soldier made out of sand, a guy with mummy/bandage-related powers and some evil ghost spirits, along with a few bandits and marauding Sandstorm Legionnaires. The special effects are pretty subpar – mummy guy’s bandages look awful, the ghost spirits look silly and the big scenes, like a motorcycle chase through a sandstorm and the fabled treasure city, are just overly fake or dull.

The film feels like it’s stuck in two separate time periods. Everything in the desert feels like its set in the past, with the costume and set designs feeling like it’s meant to be set in the 1930s (there’s your ‘The Mummy’ influence).  Every scene set outside the desert or in the city though is modern post-2010, with modern cars, clothes, technology and buildings – there are freaking laptops and yachts, which don’t mesh at all with the horse riding, rifle firing desert adventure stuff. Time is also a confusing factor here – Qiaofei’s dealings with the Sandstorm Legion make zero sense considering how old he’s meant to be.

So ‘The Treasure Hunter’ is a wash. It’s a shame too, since I tend to like desert adventures. This adventure, however, deserves to be deserted.