Sign In. Dead or Alive Hide Spoilers. HumanoidOfFlesh 22 October Takashi Miike's "Dead or Alive:Hanzaisha" left me speechless. The opening sequence is incredible in its style-we have strippers at work,several bloody shoot-outs,a gangster getting his throat slashed while sodomizing a young man in a public toilet etc. The finale is also amazing-I was literally blown away!
The film is strangely amoral-check out especially the scene in which two punks making animal porn try feverishly to excite an Alsatian dog so it can mount naked girl in their presence. The film is not as violent and sadistic as the other Miike's works like "Visitor Q",but there are some really strong images that will surely linger in the memory.
The acting is very good,the direction is well-handled and the film is hallucinogenic at times. All in all if you're fed up with predictable Hollywood's action trash check this one out! Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote. Quinoa 8 January On the DVD for Dead or Alive, the first in the trilogy, director Takashi Miike is asked how he would describe the movie to someone who had no idea what it was about, and he describes it as an "enjoyable, healthy Yakuza movie".
It's just that with certain elements, like the two main characters: the detective Jojima Sho Aikawa who's the decent, hard-nosed sort with the wife and daughter; and Ryuuichi Riki Takeuchi , who has the face like one of those really crazy villain character actors in 40s film-noir, who wants to take over the mob in the area, by any means necessary.
I felt like I could've seen some of this in any given yakuza thriller, albeit my lack of experience with the genre of "V-Cinema" in the 90s or yakuza thrillers in general. Then again, for Miike he uses a lot of this to spring-board his own visual ideas and real tricks with the material.
