Saturday, August 01, 2015

MIFF 2015 : Yakuza Apocalypse / Gokudou Daisensou


Fuck Miike Takashi. I went in with super low expectations and just wasted two hours of my time. Whatever happened to the director who made Ichi the Killer? Seriously, why cast Mad fucking Dog from the Raid if you don't even use him properly. The final 'fight' was so goddamn disappointing. Why cast Mad Dog in the movie at all if you just want him and Ichihara Hayato to stand next to each other and punch each other in the face ten times?

Why shoot the fight scenes for most of the film so up close you can't see shit? I get it for the fights with Lily Franky's character since it was all stuntman but wtf. Somehow he remembered to pull away a bit for the frog fight scene. The frog saved the movie from having no redeemable qualities.

B-movies are inherently stupid. I love Ichi. I love Versus. I love Machine Girl and all of them had a coherence and pacing to their stupidity while Yakuza Apocalypse does not. The sad thing is The sad thing is Miike could have made it pretty funny but didn't. He introduces so many stupid elements into the movie but non of them pay off.

Just repeating the line about yakuza being like vampires feeding on the katagi (civilians) does not give the movie meaning. If you have to spell the point of your movie out to your audience, what's the point of watching a (non-existant) story then? Seriously, Yakuza Apocalypse makes Tokyo Tribe look like Zebraman. Do not watch.

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