5 Things To Love About Like A Dragon

Here's five reasons why you should love Takashi Miike's live action adaptation of SEGA's Japanese Action Drama video game Yakuza.

Number Five: Dog Day Afternoon

While the main plot of the film concern's protagonist  and former Tojo Clan enforcer Kazuma Kiryu returning to his home turf in order to put things right which have gone wrong in the past, one of the sub-plots concerns a pair of bumbling petty robbers who find themselves trapped in a bank in the middle of a heatwave and no air conditoning. Their constant bickering and realising they are way over their head makes for some really funny scenes.

Number Four: The Dragon Of Dojima

Kazuki Kitamura plays the film's main protagonist Kazuma Kiryu and while he may not be an exact likeness of his video game counterpart he pretty much nails Kazuma's stoic personality. Also he looks pretty impressive in the numerous fight scenes he partakes in.

Number Three: Brawl For All

One of the video game series core game mechanics is the fighting system. As you play through all the titles you'll get involved with many martial arts battles. The series is known for it's brutally violent content and luckily director Miike doesn't shy away from it. While the choreography used is less over the top hand to hand combat and more down and dirty brawling it works and we get some really good fight scenes, especially the first fight between Kazuma and his nemesis Goro Majima.

Number Two: Feel The Heat

One of the most unique elements of the game's fight system are the Heat Actions. As the player is fighting a special meter builds up which allows them to use special moves such as stomping on a poor guy's face, smashing his head into a wall or slamming a bicycle down on him. When the meter is ready a blue flame emanates from the player's body. If this had been done by any other director then this is something that would have been completely ignored. Luckily Miike is a director who loves using wild and crazy ideas so applying the Heat Actions to the fight scenes is an excellent idea.

Number One: He's One Bad Mutha...

Every hero needs a good villain and Like A Dragon delivers with Goro Majima played by Goro Kishitani. Majima is one of my favourite characters from the video game series and Kishitani plays exactly as he is in the game. His eyepatch may be over the wrong eye but that's a minor complaint given that Majima's crazy yet at the same time incredibly humorous personality shines through.

That's it for this entry of  5 Things To Love. Be sure to check back later in the week when I'll be posting my next review.

Music Videos Feat. Jackie Chan, Leung Kar-Yan, Conan Lee & More!

I made these a few weeks ago but haven't posted them up here, some new music video for your viewing pleasure!

Drink & Fight, Jackie Chan!

Battery Feat. Leung Kar-Yan!

Secret Agent Man Feat. Jimmy Wang Yu!

Ninja, Ready To Fight!

That's it for today, new review will be up tomorrow!

Bunraku (2010)

Set in the aftermath of a global war which sees firearms having been outlawed, man with the mysterious name Drifter (Josh Harnett) arrives in town with a plan to take down the city's top boss Nicola The Woodcutter (Ron Perlman) during his quest he teams up with Japanese swordsman Yoshi (Gackt) a Bar Tender (Woody Harrelson) and the three decide to clean up once and for all.

I've had my eye on this movie for a very, very long time mostly because I liked the cast and also because what the movie promised visually intrigued me. The film takes things such as Japanese shadow theatre, German expressionism, Hollywood dance, Chanbara films, comic books, spaghetti westerns and even old school video games and throws it all together in one of the most unique cinematic experiences I've seen in a while.

The story itself is nothing write home about at all. Anybody reading this blog will have seen many movies with the same plot dozens of times and I've said before there's nothing wrong with that. If film makers can bring something original to it then the story hardly matters. Bunraku does that and does it quite well. Director Guy Moshe could have done an absolutely abysmal job of taking all the different visual elements and making a horrendously pretentious borefest but Moshe keeps things well in check and isn't afraid to try something new with what's presented on screen.

Sets are done in a manner which invokes classic German expressionism and classical theater, given the audience the impression they're watching a play as opposed to a feature film. Japanese characters subtitles are done with comic book captions and scene transitions are like your flicking through a pop-up book. Reading that you may be shaking your head and thinking "That sounds ridiculous!" and it is but works, it really does work.

What also makes the film work is the cast that really does seem to be having one heck of a time being in it. Josh Harnett, an actor whose work I greatly admire, revels as Drifter. He plays the character with all the swagger of Clint Eastwood in a Sergio Leone movie and this creates good chemistry with Japanese co-star Gackt who makes an extremely impressive English language debut. His character Yoshi leaps right out of a Kurosawa movie and it would be wonderful to see him get more roles like this even in his native Japan. Ron Perlman, Hollywood's most reliable villain actor delights as Nicola, injecting the character effortlessly with appropriate menace. However one character I wanted to address was that of the bizarre killer Number 2 played by scottish actor Kevin Mckidd.

Mckidd plays the character as if he were Fred Astaire. Only if he had used his talent for dancing to kill people instead of entertaining them. He struts his way through the fight scenes and really makes a unforgettable impression in an already memorable film.

That leads me to talk about the action scenes which are very good. Everybody gives it there all, even Hartnett who has never done action like this before swings his fists in a scene mimicking classic arcade video games. There's also a scene which introduces us to Mckidd's character utilizing sword and dance choreography in a really unique way.

And that's the key word here when talking about a film like Bunraku. Unique. When it comes to film I find it to be a word which gets used way too much and mostly applied to films which don't deserve it but this one does and despite the rather luke-warm reception it has received critically I would definitely urge you all to see it.   

Alien Vs Ninja (2010)

What's this? a new review by me? no, gentle readers you aren't having a brain aneurysm, I have indeed dusted my reviewing hat off (Yes, I own a reviewing hat, picture a dear stalker with viking horns) and I'm going to dive head first back into the fray and do I have a treat for you!

"I can scarcely believe it!"

Neither can I over-excited random fifties woman. Where to start? well, some time ago I stumbled across a trailer on Youtube. A trailer for a movie idea so awesome that it almost made my head explode just from the sheer crazy factor of it. It was a trailer for the movie ALIEN VS NINJA!

When I saw that, I went nuts. It was like a fevered cheese dream had been made real and put onto film. Of course, it was a while before the movie finally saw it's overseas release but the moment that baby hit store shelves, I grabbed my copy and ran home like a hyper-active fat kid chasing after a chocolate cake. Well, not so much ran but caught the bus but anyway, Moving onto the film itself.

Set in ancient Japan (Yet the Ninja have quite modern weapons and armor) the film opens with ninjas doing what ninjas do best, blowing stuff up then getting the hell out of dodge. A small group from the Iga clan are fleeing back to their home after the successful mission where they witness a meteor crashing to the ground. Since the ninja are simple folk they don't concern themselves with it and continue on home. However, the meteor contains a deadly alien creature that's hell bent on destroying everything in their path.

During their trip home we're introduced to the characters, which are pretty much every stock Japanese movie character you can think of. The hot head leader, the stoic best friend, the tom boy female and the annoying tubby one. If you're familiar with a lot of Japanese action movies then you've met these characters many times before. Yet it's all very trivial. After all, you don't watch a film called Alien Vs Ninja expecting to see a deep character study about a group of individuals who've dedicated themselves to what is essentially a nihilistic ideal. 

You watch it to see some good ol' fashioned ass kicking and this movie delivers that in spades. The next day our heroes are training when they stumble upon an injured young man. He tells them of a demon which has wiped out his entire village and upon further investigation of the boy's ramblings they are set upon by the alien. I won't go any further with the plot as that's pretty much the set up but from that point on this film goes from average Japanese action movie to a complete balls out, screw loose acid trip of an experience. Despite the film's obvious low budget, they did a whole lot given what they had. The practical effects are not perfect, the Alien resembles the ones from the well know Hollywood only it looks like it was done a third of the budget.

Still, it just adds to the whole over the top grindhouse vibe it gives off. Of course being an action movie it contains liberals helpings of ninja on extra-terrestrial fighting. The choreography while not all that stylised is fast, slick , practical and competently edited and it's definitely worth checking out. This is a film that has to be seen to be believed and if you've been sitting on the fence about this then jump off that fence, into your neighbor's pool then set fire to his lawn because you really need to give this one a try. 

So that's all I'm gonna say on this one folks. Feels good to be writing again and I hope you found the new style more easy on the eyes. Having read some of my past reviews I've decided to be a little more concise and breaks things up a bit with images and videos to make my posts a little easier to digest rather then posting walls of text. I'll probably write in more detail depending on the film but for now I'm just trying things out.

Stay tuned folks for more reviews (And I mean it this time!)

The Street Fighter (1974)

Following the tragic and untimely death of Bruce Lee in 1973, the martial arts film world was in turmoil. Various projects which the star had been attached went up in smoke and what was to be his magnum opus, Game of Death remained unfinished. Unscrupulous film producers rushed to find someone to take his place, mostly what audiences got were shameless imitators who aped Lee's filmography and sullied his great legacy. Meanwhile over in Japan, a film hit cinemas that struck a cord, not only with local audiences but with fight film fans world wide. That film was The Street Fighter. An action crime film starring Sonny Chiba.

Chiba had already established a foothold in the Japanese film industry with appearances in films such as Yakuza Deka and Bodyguard Kiba but he was yet to star in a film that would really propel him to being a major star. Upon it's release it was well received and went on to spawn two sequels, all starring Chiba in the lead. It wasn't until years later that Chiba admitted that he had turned down the opportunity to work with Lee on the film Way Of The Dragon and to this day remains one of the biggest regrets of his life.

With it's combination of over the top characters and brutal fight choreography, The Street Fighter has gained a cult following which includes famous admirers like film director and shameless film nerd Quentin Tarantino. The film True Romance includes a conversation between the lead characters in which they talk about Sonny's on screen persona.

Since it's release the film, along with it's sequels, have fallen into the public domain and have been released on DVD by various labels. It's worth mentioning that when the film was originally released in the U.S. it was given an X rating due to the level of violence rather then sexual content and was a first for a film of this nature. If that doesn't give you an idea of the type of movie this is, I don't know what will.

Sonny Chiba portrays Takuma Tsurugi, a mercenary for hire who ends up a target for the mob when they try and hire him to kidnap the daughter of a recently deceased oil tycoon but refuses when he finds out the people trying to hire him are part of a criminal organization specialising in assassination. The plot is shamelessly incidental and gives Chiba, who holds black belts in six different forms of Japanese martial arts, to show just what he can do best and that's bust people's head's open and rip a dude's nutsack clean off all the while grimacing like he's having an incredibly uncomfortable bowel movement.

Sonny's character doesn't screw around, he's very much the anti-hero, he'll help you out in a jam but only if you've got the cash to back it, mess him around and he'll have no problem breaking your face and selling your sister into sex slavery. The film does a great job of trying to differentiate Chiba's on screen persona from that of Bruce Lee, who often played the down trodden hero doing what was right for his fellow country men. If Sonny Chiba was in The Big Boss, he would have gone to Han Yin-Chieh in the first five minutes of the movie, ripped his throat out and then sold his cousin to the local whore house just for laughs. This type of down and dirty action hero worked well in Chiba's favour as it allowed him to do things in movies that no other action star could have pulled off.

The action is some of the most brutal I've seen from a film during this era. Chiba shows his skills as a martial artist really well, the moves themselves don't look as stylish or pretty as Chinese Kung Fu does but it's just as intricately choreographed and just as hard hitting. With every punch, kick and elbow he throws you actually feel it and gives the fight scenes just that little added touch of brutality. One of the defining moments in the film is when Tsurugi goes toe to toe with a karate master portrayed by Masafumi Suzuki, at first he's over confident and bragging how much he's going to beat him but when the fighting starts it's clear Tsurugi is outmatched but when that famous theme music starts playing away you know he means business and fight comes to an incredible stalemate.

That's one of the more interesting aspects of The Street Fighter, each fight feels different and looks different. There's a clever little fight in which Tsurugi goes against a blind swordsman (An obvious riff on the famous character Zatoichi) who blocks the bright sun behind him and moves so the sudden flash of light would make it difficult for Tsurugi to place just exactly when he'll strike, it's a nicely edited and tightly choreographed fight and further proves the maker's of this movie were really trying hard to make The Street Fighter stand out. Yet, all that just leads us to the the finale on board an oil freighter where Sonny tears through the bad guys, bodies fly, bright red blood is spilled and Chiba proves just what a complete bad-ass he is.

This film is a much beloved movie among fight movie fans for a reason and if you haven't seen it yet, you really owe yourself get your hands on the DVD but make sure the one you get is completely uncut cos you don't want to miss out on a single second of the brutal and bloody spectacle that is The Street Fighter