Friday, September 3, 2010

A Short Synosis Of The Dead Or Alive Trilogy By Takashi Miike

By Ronald Erickson

The Dead or Alive Trilogy belongs on your must see movie downloads list simply because it's so crazy. You've seen action movies, you've seen over the top action movies, but you've never seen anything quite like these three flicks from Mike Takashi . Every one is out to top the last in terms of sheer craziness.

The first in the series, Dead or Alive, was focused on the idea of simply teaming up the cult legends Sho Aikawa and Riki Takeuchi, sort of the Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino of the cult Japanese film scene. So think of it like Japan's answer to Heat. Interestingly, the movie was meant to solve one of the main problems with that movie: The ending was kind of an anti-climax.

We can't spoil the ending of Dead or Alive for you, and you wouldn't believe us if we did. Just check it out and see for yourself. The whole movie is designed to be non-stop, exciting, fast paced, and entirely over the top the whole way through.

Dead or Alive 2 is one of those rare sequels that blows the original away, even though the original was already pretty good. Aikawa and Takeuchi are recast as two entirely different characters, that parallel their original roles in some interesting ways. Where the first is about a cop and a gangster out to get each other, this one focuses on two childhood friends who have grown up to become hitmen who donate all of their earnings to buying medicine for children in third world countries. This movie is all heart.

This one is much more positive, much more life affirming, and surprisingly sweet and sentimental, whereas the first was relatively dark and negative in comparison. It's interesting having these two movies, that are so different from each other, and yet have so much in common.

The third of the trilogy, Dead or Alive Final, takes the series in an all new direction, getting into a science fiction setting akin to Blade Runner. It might not be the best of the trilogy, but it has to be seen so you can see how it ties the whole trilogy together in a strange way.

If you like the Dead or Alive trilogy, you should also check out Deadly Outlaw Rekka, which feels like the fourth film in the series in spirit. It has the same sense of over the top craziness and stars Riki Takeuchi in the lead role.

As the trailer for the first film declares: Takashi Miike is the rabid dog of Japanese cinema. You never know what he's going to do in his movies. Interestingly, he's said in interviews that he tends to look for boring scripts. When the script is dull, that gives him a lot of opportunity to spice it up. And spice it up he does. Miike has always managed to take these director for hire movies and make something new out of them. He makes an average of four movies a year, and has made around a hundred feature films total. The quality of each of these movies... It goes up and down, but if only one in ten is worth watching, ten great movies is more than most directors ever get around to creating.

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