Event

DEAD OR ALIVE

Dir. Takashi Miike, 1999.
Japan. 105 min.

Beginning with perhaps the longest line of coke ever snorted on screen and finishing with nothing short of the destruction of the entire world, Takashi Miikes DEAD OR ALIVE is sure to please fans of the directors trademark transgressive shock. Yet beyond Miikes typical chaotic cult movie appeal DEAD OR ALIVE manages to also demonstrate a remarkably well put-together genre offering that makes a compelling case for Miike as a more refined, nuanced auteur than he is typically given credit. When small-time Yakuza boss Ryuuichi (Japanese action movie icon Riki Takeuchi) starts murdering rival gangsters in an effort to gain power in the underworld, Detective Jojima (early Kiyoshi Kurosawa regular, Show Aikawa) must weave his way through various underworld networks to end the bloodbath. While typical Miike oddities like a gangster getting his hand breaded and fried or a man in a giant chicken suit getting blown to bits in a sea of feathers certainly shine throughout, these are often only window dressing for the emotionally engaging tale of masculine aggression and crumbling family structures that form the meat of the story.