Reviews
Juyuso seubgyuksageun (1999)
Not quite what you might be expecting (but in a good way!)
On the surface, this tale of a brutal gang who rob a gas station (hence the name!) and take the workers hostage appears to be just another been-there, seen-that Asian thriller, but underneath there's a soft centre waiting to be discovered - short vignettes give us clues as to how these thugs came to be this way, one of the hostages learns to stand up for himself, characters who are even nastier than the robbers end up worst off, and even the thugs themselves get a shot a redemption. OK, it's not especially profound, and like so many Asian films, it suffers from an inconsistency of tone (lashings of violence, swearing, slapstick comedy and musical numbers make for a strange mix) which might alienate some western viewers, but it's fast-moving, never boring, surprising in all the right places and a definite recommendation for a fun evening's viewing.
Shinjuku kuroshakai: Chaina mafia sensô (1995)
Astonishing (& astonishingly violent...)
Anyone new to the incredibly prolific Takashi Miike's work might want to think twice about making this startling film their first experience of this truly maverick director. In keeping with Miike's working practice of taking any work that comes his way and then grafting his own sensibilities onto the script, this is at heart a fairly basic yakuza thriller, with a morally ambiguous cop chasing a gang which his lawyer brother has fallen in with. What takes the movie out of the realms of the same-old same-old however, is the utterly unflinching attitude so some of the most sudden and horrific violence seen in today's cinema. And this isn't that nice cool, clean violence so beloved of US cinema - this stuff is nasty, painful and HURTS! That said, the pace is breakneck, the characters are unusual without being just being burdened with stock eccentricities, Miike's sense of humour reveals itself and the most unexpected moments, and his camera is never quite where you expect it to be, making it hard to look away from the screen, whatever he might be showing you! It doesn't have the "Ohmigod" ending of "Dead Or Alive," but if you're not squeamish, now's the time to get on board the Miike bandwagon before he ends up on some Hollywood studio's "new John Woo" shopping list...