2011 Yakuza Film Awards

With 2011 drawing to a close, we are going to revisit the Yakuza movies that were dutifully examined this year with the first annual Yakuza Film Award Show.  Five movies have been reviewed this year, and each, in their own way, had something to offer.  So we'll be highlighting those offerings by awarding the best of the best with  The Yakkie - a golden statuette of Takeuchi Riki.  Nothing says ridiculous Yakuza mayhem like Takeuchi Riki, so what would be more fitting than a golden statue in his honor to award the movies in contention this evening?

It took a lot of thought and debate from the Yakuza Film Academy, and after much debate, three stabbings, and a shooting, consensus was at last reached.  The categories were developed with much thought, and the most deserving winners will go home tonight with a scowling Yakkie to put on the mantle in a display of epic awesome that they have earned with blood, sweat, tears, and a back alley mortal combat death match.  The movies in contention for the epic golden statue are all of the ones that were reviewed in 2011.

So, without further ado, on with the show.  Tonight, we have a variety of categories that touch on all of the important things in Yakuza films, like death, destruction, and bravado.  Our first category is:

Biggest Show of Epic Badassery.

There was a fight to the death for this category, as after all badassery is the staple of the Yakuza film.  However, the creative self-mutilation in the name of preserving one's Yakuza honor displayed in Tokyo Mafia: Yakuza Wars (1995) clinched the win for Takeuchi Riki.  Sure, cutting off your own finger as an act of contrition already smacks of bad-ass, but Takeuchi Riki took it a step further - he bit off his own finger.  And in the eyes of the judges, that's just beyond bad-ass.  Well deserved, in my estimation.

Best Lunatic.

Most Yakuza films have crazy people. It comes with the territory.  But outright lunatics are fewer and farther between.  Had Takashi Miike's Like a Dragon been reviewed this year, Kishitani Goro would have taken home the gold with his portrayal of Majima.  But since he's not in the running, the Yakkie for Best Lunatic goes straight into the hands of Jo Akio for his portrayal of the nameless psychotic Chinese gangster-assassin in Blood.  Without any dialogue to speak of, this lunatic killer offs his victims by suffocating them with plastic bags, all the while with a wide-eyed frozen grin.  I'm not sure if it's creative brilliance or pure uninspired hackery, but it stood out, and that's what counts.

Most Derivative Yakuza Film.

1995's Score was a heist movie in more ways than one.  It stole liberally from Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and, oddly enough, Jean Claude Van Damme's movie Hard Target.  And when I say stole, I don't mean it was inspired by, but that it literally took everything from costumes to concepts to plot points to actual scenes, and recreated them. Normally that kind of thing will get you sued, but in the case of Score, it scored it a golden statuette.  The movie was interesting enough, if for no other reason than to see the variety of ways it recycled old movie parts from Quentin Tarrantino and John Woo, and so the win is well deserved.  After all, every movie needs a gimmick, even if the gimmick in question is that is rips off entire plots and scenes from another movie.  It's a valid gimmick.

Film with the Most Random Characters.

Katsuhito Ishii's Party 7 was short on plot and purpose, but it did have an interesting cast of eclectic characters.  Everyone from the bumbling Yakuza, Miki, to his super hot ex-girlfriend to her strange and wimpy current boyfriend, to Captain Banana and Okita Soji, to everyone else - they each bring something to the table, even if it's just a little quirk or odd manner.  Miki is the presumed main character, but everyone gets equal play, and in a movie where the plot doesn't really matter, that's important.  And each character is so random and wildly different than the next, it helps keep an otherwise pointless movie interesting.

Most Creative Death Scene.

In standard Yakuza films (outside of some of Takashi Miike's more bizarre outings), deaths are pretty standard - bullet to the head, knife to the gut, etc., but in Takeshi Kitano's 2010 Yakuza outing, Outrage, creative uses of brutality become the standard.  You've probably seen the clips on YouTube of heads smashed with rocks, epic uses of rogue dentistry, gunshots and bomb blasts, but the one stand-out kill of Outrage (Spoiler Alert) is the death of Kippei Shiina's character Mizuno.  I'll limit the spoiler by saying it involves a car and a length of rope, and it falls into the realm of "more difficult than it's worth", sort of like the bad guy in a James Bond movie using a slow-moving lazer to eviscerate the hero who is tied to a table, when a bullet to the head would be much more expedient.  Either way, kudos to Kitano for coming up with it - this is why we watch Yakuza movies in the first place.

Most Violent Film.

And now for the Yakuza Film Rundown's version of Best Picture - the most violent film of 2011... and the award goes to Takeshi Kitano for Outrage. Outrage didn't have the biggest body count of the films reviewed in 2011 - that would probably go to Blood - however Outrage displayed some of the most visceral and disturbing violence of any movie reviewed this year.  Kitano was apparently making up for lost time with his latest flick, and that's why we love it - mean spirited gangsters killing each other off in betrayal after betrayal with uninhibited brutality, and without even the morbidly comforting pretext that it was justified; that's just how these guys are, and the win is well deserved.

That's it for the Yakuza Film Rundown awards for 2011, see you next year, where we'll be bringing you even more reviews of films from the Yakuza film genre.  And more violence.

Blood (1998)

Takeuchi Riki's 1998 (presumably- no make that very likely) straight to video flick Blood (Wolf's Blood in Japanese) is a B movie in the same vein as Wild Criminal - part Yakuza film and part crime drama.  Takeuchi's bread and butter is playing good guys who do bad things, and the character of Nakajo Takuya fits the bill.  He's a seasoned killer-for-hire who (in the stereotypical fashion of these types of movies) kills without a thought.  But no matter how bad ass Takeuchi plays things, he always brings enough humanity to his roles to show that no matter how tough the guy is, there is some good stowed away there somewhere.  Either that or he just plain wants to hold on to a little bit of the movie hero image.




The Plot.

In the case of Blood, Nakajo Takuya was a good guy with a good girl back in highschool, when he was attacked by some punks and his girlfriend was raped.  His best friend Kamiyama Masayuki (played somewhat blandly by Takachi Noboru, and who looks kinda like Kane Kosugi) saves the day by killing one of the punks with a knife (I'm suddenly having flashbacks to The Outsiders), and the others flee.  Takuya can't let his friend take the rap for killing the punk that was raping his girlfriend, so he turns himself in to the police instead, and goes to jail, where he changes his name to Kizaki and apparently became a cold-blooded killer.  His old buddy Masayuki, free and clear of the cops, marries Takuya's former girlfriend Yuki, and goes to medical school to become a doctor - which is fortunate for Takuya, since the next time they meet he's dying in an emergency room, only to be saved by his old friend.

It also turns out that the very crime boss that is trying to kill Takuya is also a patient of Masayuki's by the name of Ri, who happens to be dying from terminal bone cancer.  Unfortunately for Masayuki and his wife, when the crime boss (played by Hakuryu) finds out that Masayuki and Takuya are old friends, he decides to use this to his advantage, forcing Masayuki to kill Takuya in exchange for the life of his wife. 

Very little in this movie stands out.  Sure, the script isn't unintelligent or bad, but take a typical Takeuchi Riki straight to video movie, toss in a few stock concepts, sprinkle with an colorful character or two, shake well, and voila.

The Cast and Characters.

Most of the characters are bland, including Masayuki, and Takuya, is well, nearly every B movie character Takeuchi has ever played.  And Hakuryu plays the crime boss Ri as simply a serious guy - no over the top craziness that you'd see from Ozawa Hitoshi, for example.  My assumption is that Hakuryu downplays everything because this is a man who will be dead in six months from cancer, but it makes for a sort of uninteresting performance.  The issues Ri may be wrestling with aren't even really tackled in this movie, so Hakuryu isn't given much to work with anyway.  I know Hakuryu has been in many Yakuza films (although none actually come to mind) but this would be one of his less impressive performances.

One standout performance, mainly because it's so over the top is the pinheaded Chinese killer with a perma-grin that works for Ri.  Unfortunately I'm at a loss as to who plays him since I can't seem to find it anywhere, but it's one little thing that helps an otherwise dullish movie.  Another oddity would have to be the grandma assassin (as in a grandma who is an assassin, not one who kills grandmothers) - I'm not sure why the director chose to put in an old lady assassin, but again, another oddity to help distinguish this movie from others.

It bears mentioning that Sugata Shun also has a small cameo at the end.  It also bears mentioning that this would have been a better movie if he had a larger role.  As an aside, one actor who definitely was NOT in this movie was Aikawa Sho - even though until I fixed it, IMDB said he was, and quite a few other sites also said he was in it.  However, a close look at the DVD case of the American release of Blood shows someone who really does look suspiciously like him.  So maybe he's in the director's cut?  If anyone knows, let me know.

There are a few good violent scenes, including Takeuchi Riki taking out bad guys First Blood style, and an ending that I suppose wants to be cool, but doesn't quite pull it off.  It is vaguely similar to the ending of Yakuza Demon, however not nearly as well done.  Which takes us to the violence tally.

The Violent Rundown.

Blood was barely average for violence.  It does start out right in the shit with three executions (and one of the victims looks suspiciously like Rokkaku Seiji, who played the chubby Assassin in Takashi Miike's 13 Assassins), and follows with 12 shootings, 2 snapped necks, 6 stabbings, one partial rape, one slashing, 2 strangulations, and someone getting blown up.  Like I said, average.

The Final Verdict.

Blood really doesn't offer much more than an uninteresting story with a light dusting of a few interesting characters and a couple scenes of acceptable violence (the coolness meter registers a slight tick, nothing stunning by any means).  It is about on par with Tokyo Mafia: Yakuza Wars as far as quality goes, but without the slightly more interesting story and better cast.  Blood is a B movie in every way, and only could really appeal to three types of people - Yakuza film fans, Takeuchi Riki fans, and people who just have to see all Japanese movies. Blood is not terrible in the same way that Tokyo Mafia: Yakuza Wars isn't terrible.  It will satisfy people who are interested in the subject matter or some aspect of it, but probably won't do much for anyone else.  Personally, I didn't hate it, but enjoyed it least of all the movies I've reviewed so far, with the possible exception of Yakuza Zombie. I can barely rank it above Yakuza Zombie as a film, but with a gun in my face and my back to the wall forced to choose, I'll put it just above, mostly because Yakuza Zombie was so much more ridiculous. You can view the trailer for Blood here.