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 The first film in The Black Society Trilogy is all about "alienation, corrpution and emotional distintegration." It's also about a "dirty cop" and a "gay sadistic Chinese warlord." You can check out Artsmagic's press info about all this here, here, and here. All three movies are available in a slick-looking limited edition box set as well. 1995, 102 minutes, Widescreen DVD
Here's what I've figured out about the crime world of the Far East. In Japan you've got the Yakuza, the Chinese have triads, and the Vietnamese have Tongs (at least that's what I seem to remember from 21 Jump Street - that was the show where they had that undercover Vietnamese guy in Johnny Depp's algebra class, right?). That doesn't even count some of that more mystical stuff like those secret societies that are in charge of affairs like killing Bruce Lee for revealing too many of their ancient ways to us westerners. Independently, each of these groups always make for a fairly entertaining movie, what with chopping each other's pinkies off, speeches about honor and respect, and hanging around in clubs waiting for a rival gang to show up for a rumble. But Takeshi Miike ups the ante in Shinjuku Triad Society by having a Chinese triad and the Yakuza mix it up over some illegal organ trafficking business resulting in a lots of guys getting beaten, shot, stabbed, eye gouged, and drugged.
Not satisfied though with merely depicting a typical gang war punctuated with extreme belches of brutal violence, Takeshi solidifies this one as required viewing for all real fans of crime films by throwing in the cop who plays by his own rules! Anyone who is initially put off by the subtitles or the fact that it's set in a foreign country should be comforted by this development and recognize that this isn't one of those sissy, artsy foreign crime dramas where doves fly around in slow motion or where the hero sheds a big gooey tear when his partner dies or who is haunted by some failure in his past. This is a movie where the hero sodomizes one of the bad guy's girlfriends in an effort to get information from her. I think you'll agree then that this movie is certainly accessible to fans of Dirty Harry-type movies and their ilk, though detective Tatsuhito doesn't coddle the criminal element like Eastwood's Callahan did.
In fact, there isn't much coddling of anyone or anything going on this film. Everyone is a sick, demented scuzz involved in any variety of activities that will make you wince. Wincing is good of course. If I'm busy wincing when one of Tatsuhito's cop buddies is interrogating a suspect for him by engaging in a technique that I'll politely describe as "doggie style encouragement" then even though I'm turning a bit green, I'm definitely not bored. And speaking of all-male doggie style activities, one thing I never realized about the Yakuza and the triads were just how gay they all are. I don't say that as any sort of pejorative, but only as an observation gleaned from what went on in this movie. This movie had to have the most all-male oral sex scenes of any movie not involving performers named Bruce, Max, or Cougar.
Maybe that was to be expected when the whacko crime lord at the center of this grimy, violent storm was named Wang. Wang is a Chinese guy who fled Taiwan at the age of fourteen after killing his father. He settled down in Japan and got himself a job running a mob dedicated to matching up organ donors with prospective recipients. Putting aside the fact that he is also involved in some prostitution racket that sees him rip the eye out of the madam who makes a derisive comment about his Chinese heritage (and hey, he was provoked after all), is Wang really such a bad guy to want to help out needy families of two different stripes? There's rich families that need a healthy kidney for their kid and there's poor families who need some fast cash and just happen to have an extra kidney lying around in their kid's gut. Sounds to me like Wang is just making several families' dreams come true. He's in the happiness business just as much as in the illegal trade of underage organ business.
Tatsuhito becomes obsessed with bringing down Wang (I'm in favor of any movie where a cop has "bring down" someone. That implies a finish that's going to see a big, bloody fight with a lot of grunting and gritting of teeth as someone squeezes off multiple rounds into someone else's face. It's much better than an arrest followed by -yawn- Miranda warnings and high fives between the cops.) though I think it had more to with saving his gay brother, who through his job at a law firm becomes mixed up with Wang's organization, than it did with the organ stuff. Tatsuhito has some elderly parents that are worried about his brother and he feels obligated to try and extricate little bro from his burgeoning life of crime.
We also find out that Tatsuhito is half Japanese and half Chinese. To be honest I never really got what that had to with anything because it wasn't like he was caught between the two worlds of the Yakuza and Wang's triad. He was a cop looking to bust as many heads as possible, Japanese,Chinese, little mixed-race brothers - it didn't really matter. He does go over to China on an assignment that has him escorting a prisoner back there and he stays awhile and investigates the hospital that Wang has had built in the old hometown. All this confirms is that Wang is using the hospital as a facility for his illegal organ transplant operations. Was that side trip even necessary? Wasn't he going to take this guy out even before confirming all this? Despite this questionable detour, I wasn't terribly exercised over it because Tatsuhito explained to his superiors back in Japan that he was held up in China because he had the runs! My God! How many times did I make that same phone call to my high school during my senior year when I was out investigating pot parties and Journey concerts?
Once back in Japan, Tatsuhito's investigation into Wang and his brother's whereabouts somehow finds him taking on about twenty Yakuza guys at their club. He gives a pretty good account of himself against the first five or six guys, it's the next fifteen dudes that cause him problems. Beaten within an inch of his life and drugged up, he's dumped into a trunk and sold to Wang who is hoping that Tatsuhito has taken good care of his kidneys and corneas. One thing I noticed in this movie that we saw in this scene was the tendency of the characters to spew forth these really cool soliloquies as they hover between life and death. Tatsuhito tells some bizarre story about him and his brother falling into a pig pen and being blamed for stealing stuff when they were kids. A couple of other characters manage to get some memorable last words in after being shot several times, including one guy who tells Tatsuhito that his brother is probably already being "corn holed" by Wang. Guess what happens to that guy after he says that? I think they're going to need to hire some more internal affairs guys after this "investigation" is over!
Just when all hope seems lost for Tatsuhito and I thought we were in for one of those Organ situations, Tatsuhito gets rescued! But, by whom? Why the girl he sodomized earlier! Obviously, the gritty existence in the Japanese underworld is a bit different than what we would probably recognize as normal. Apparently, the whole sodomy episode was merely a second date for these two. (The first date would be when she was arrested following the murder of a cop and she told Tatsuhito she would give him information if he would "do it" with her. Tatsuhito isn't a dirty cop though, so he smashed her face in with a chair, per department procedure I'm sure.) But what could have made this gal so enamored with Tatsuhito and his unorthodox courting techniques? It turns out that during that episode of forcible sodomy, it was the first time she had an orgasm without being high! I think it's safe to say that director Miike, much like his cop protagonist, plays by his own rules.
Tatsuhito, with his new girlfriend's help, recovers enough (despite her continuing demands to "do it") to embark on a final bit of R&R (Revenge and Rampage) and hunts down those responsible for his plight. With some information his old lady has as to Wang's whereabouts due to her also being the girlfriend of Wang's right hand man, Tatsuhito is able to locate and confront Wang. Without giving anything away, let me just say that if you've just shot a guy four times in the chest and he's still trying to choke the piss out of you, do you really think that whacking him over the head with a wine bottle is going to loosen his grip? Now, stabbing him in the jugular with the broken bottle might just do the trick.
Miike adopts a pretty straight forward approach to shooting this movie and there's not a lot of scenes that merely exist to show off someone's camera technique. His focus is on the unrelenting brutality of this world and he rarely lets up on it. This isn't a movie where you've got big name actors strutting around posing and dropping one liners on you that are designed merely for the trailer. Its style derives from the events as they play out and while you could say those events are sometimes extreme to the point of being unbelievable, it's all about context. For instance in the context of Wang's world, it wouldn't necessarily be out of the question for him to run around flashing rival crime lords as a show of disrespect. A bit tacky, yes. But unbelievable? No. The DVD from Artsmagic is what we've come to expect from them. It's loaded with extras including an audio commentary, trailer, film bios, and interviews. After showcasing some of Miike's lesser works such as the nice to look at, but dull Sabu, and the cheap and gimmicky Full Metal Yakuza, it's nice to see all the extras supporting a movie that you'd actually want to see. It's a vicious crime epic that refuses to compromise or glamorize what it portrays. There's no redemption or validation at the end of this one. It's merely about whose capacity to absorb and mete out violence is greater than everyone else's. This, the first in a loose trilogy of crime flicks known as The Black Society Trilogy, is the kind of Miike stuff that put this guy on our radar, and deservedly so.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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