Order of the Dragon (Yakuza, l'Ordre du Dragon)

[pro-bassoonist]

Takashi Miike's Order of the Dragon (2007) has received a preliminary release date for the Gallic markets: September 22.

David Austin:

Like a Dragon is the rare film that is actually improved by its fundamental incoherence. Plot twists that would be irritating in a movie that followed logic or made sense are just dandy in Like a Dragon – Takashi Miike’s wacky adaptation of the “Yakuza” video game. It is somewhat tame stuff by Miike standards – the sex and violence have been toned way down, but it is also good-natured, tongue-in-cheek and just plain fun. And that is not to say that Like a Dragon isn’t an insanely violent film – it’s just slightly more Three Stooges than, say, people being hung on hooks and doused in tempura oil.

The totally disjointed plot may or may not focus on the theft of a huge sum of money from a yakuza syndicate. In reality there are about 7 different plots that intermittently intersect over the course of one long, hot night. The “main” plot line involves Kiryu (Kazuki Kitamura), a stock heroic Yakuza straight out of a 1960’s ninkyo eiga. He’s out to reunite a little girl with her mother, though it’s never made clear why. Kiryu is pursued by the manic Majima (New Graveyard of Honor’s Goro Kishitani in an eye-patch and filigreed jacket), possibly Miike’s most fun character since Tadanobu Asano’s Kakihara in Ichi the Killer. Majima is a baseball-bat wielding lunatic who is ought to get Kiryu for some unmentioned slight and is happy to smash up half of Tokyo in the meantime. The other main, almost totally unrelated plotline involves a couple of young lovers who start a crime spree seemingly on a whim. Also on hand are some goofy bank robbers caught in a sticky hostage situation, the police who are staking them out (including Sho Aikawa), another detective who seems to do nothing but wander the streets, a sado-masochistic information broker (Yoshiyoshi Arakawa), a Korean assassin, and an assortment of gangsters, night club hosts and bosses. Some plots work better than others – Majima steals every scene while I could not wait for the scenes with the two kids to end.

Miike working commercial is rarely Miike at his best – Like a Dragon doesn’t hold a patch on Ichi the Killer, Audition or Visitor Q. However, this is still light years ahead of crap like Andromedia, Tennen Shojo Man Next, or even the disappointing Great Yokai War. As a pure piece of entertainment, Like a Dragon succeeds in spades. By the way, last week I pointed to Chanbara Beauty as an example of the weaknesses of video game adaptations (see review here) , and said that the world still awaits the great video game adaptation. Well, the world is still waiting, but on the basis of Like a Dragon I can say someone is at least trying.

Pro-B