Bullet Points: Yakuza Apocalypse
Takashi Miike has made some weird ass movies over the years. I’ve personally seen several of them and have only heard of the extreme weirdness of others but Yakuza Apocalypse has piqued my interest because of his talents behind the camera and for the crazy-sounding title the film has. I mean, how weird could it be?
Synopsis: In the ruthless underground world of the yakuza, a legendary boss, rumored to be invincible, is in truth a vampire. After a successful assassination attempt, the boss bites an underling, passing on his vampire powers.
- Being Cool: “There was a time when being a man meant being Yakuza.” The film tells us as much as our main character Kageyama (Hayato Ichihara) narrates us through the beginning of the film. We meet the vampire yakuza leader Kamiura and learn that he’s actually done a pretty good job of living a long time without turning into one of those bad vampires that just sucks everybody’s blood.
- Mad Dog: Eventually, Kamiura had to die and pass on his vampiric abilities to Kageyama. The fact that he had to die at the hands of Yayan Ruhian, veteran of The Raid films and amazing on screen martial artist, is a huge plus in my book. Several times throughout this movie I was on the verge of “checking out”. It gets a little too strange for me at times and the story doesn’t get any better the longer it goes, but at least we get to see a couple of really fun Ruhian fights.
- So much for the civies: Kamiura had a deep love for the civilians of the town. He did his best not to kill them and he always took care of them the best he could but Kageyama hasn’t quite gotten to that level yet. He starts biting random people left and right and eventually turns a good portion of the citizenry into vampires.
- Mascot fighter: The mysterious group that saw to the death of Kamiura also employs a guy who is dressed in a mascot costume from some weird Teletubbies show. He shows up and instantly starts kicking the shit out of everyone. If you think this is getting weird, just wait…
- Not enough: The Yakuza in the film that aren’t vampires are pretty weak. They are actually made to seem downright useless. It probably would have helped my viewing of the film if they hadn’t been so worthless.
The Verdict: This was a hard watch for me. I enjoyed much of the action and was taken back by how cool the opening scenes were. I even like the idea of some vampire yakuza dude out there who has been around forever. It was simply the strangeness of this movie that turned me off. It felt like it was two different films scrunched together with that added Miike weirdness. No one does action scenes quite like Miike but I would be lying if I said that I’ll ever watch this movie again. Skip it and watch another one of Miike’s wonderful filmography instead.
