Extraordinary Movie & Video Guide

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Full Metal Yakuza. Japan 1997. Directed by Takashi Miike

One of the lesser known Takashi Miike films, Full Metal Yakuza tells a story of Kensuke, a janitor/cleaning man for yakuza gang. His boss, Tousa is about to go to prison for a few years. Kensuke and Tousa die in assassination shortly after imprisoning. Still. their life isn't about to end since crazy scientist builds a modern day version of Frankenstein's monster and Robocop - using robotics and parts of human bodies. The head of Kensuke is attached to the body.

Full Metal Yakuza has clear influences from Paul Verhoeven's Robocop in its idea, plot and individual scenes. Most surprising, though, was to notice that its humor is close to Troma Teams movies - Miike succees to exceed every lines of bad taste, in a way that even Lloyd Kaufman cannot compete. Robogangster has different "features", like enormous penis wobbling around and between his legs. And that hilarious, sideways-moving defence "dance" that has to be seen. This kind of movie wouldn't be anything without huge blood spurts and dismemberings. After the "light" comical approach there's a disturbing scene that includes necrophilism, that won't (hopefully) make you laugh.

Tsuyoshi Ujiki is very good in role of Kensuke, as a real loser whose acts of revenge are kind of sad - like in director's later effort Ichi the Killer. Other cast is also well chosen and familiar gallery from many other Miike's films.

Takashi Miike has apparently used "fogging" in purpose, to annoy the watchers and so it is with this movie also. This kind of censoring is usual in Japanese films anyway, so I can't say more about the censoring of this release. Artsmagigdvd release is nevertheless uncut.

Within spectacular and provocative effects there is a clear story and interesting persons, who are not insignificant at all. Therefore Full Metal Yakuza is ultimately a somekind of tragicomedy with flavours of science fiction, action, horror and drama. Because there are many Miike films I haven't seen, I could easily rate this "four star out of five".

Extras include for example interviews of Miike and editor Yasushi Shimamura, audio commentary by Tom Mes (Takashi Miike-expert from midnighteye.com and author of Agitator - The Cinema of Takashi Miike), filmographies and biographies. Interview of Miike and audio commentary are the most interesting extras which enlighten the history of Full Metal Yakuza, director's thoughts and huge straight-to-video market of Japan. Picture quality isn't sharp but when the movie is this good, I won't complain too much.