Dead or Alive

A gang of Chinese origin in Tokyo tries to take the drug market by breaking the balance between the Japanese and Chinese organisations. Ryuichi leads them. Against him is Jojima, a detective whose family is coming apart. Both men are doing the same thing: crossing a line to find money. Takashi Miike directs. Riki Takeuchi plays Ryuichi, Sho Aikawa plays Jojima. Both ends of the film became legendary. The opening is a montage compressed into six minutes: stripping, cocaine, eating, executions, all cut hard and stacked over music. The narrative does not begin. It detonates. The ending abandons the rules of the genre completely. The two men face each other in the street, and what follows is no longer a realistic reckoning; Miike closes on an image that destroys the world. What it means is still argued over, and Miike's own explanations have never settled it. The stretch in between is unexpectedly calm: family scenes, a hospital, money trouble. Miike only deploys the brutality after establishing that stillness. This is the first of three. Two sequels followed with the same two actors and entirely unconnected stories. Who it is for: viewers curious about the extreme wing of Japanese crime cinema, and about Miike. Who it is not for: the violence is genuinely excessive and some of it exists to disturb. That is a stylistic decision, not an accident.