Full Metal gokudô

It is tiresome enough when so-called "professional" critics drag a film over the coals for not being an exact match to other work by the same director. It is oh-so-much worse when the same is done by amateurs who don't even know the full output of the filmmaker under this type of dissection.

With splashy films like Ichi, the Dead or Alive series, and The Happiness of the Katokuris having reached these shores and found their audience, the smaller films have started to tag along. Visitor Q and Audition have been highly praised by many, but these low-budgeters were made after Miike had gotten his quirkiness shaped into a formula. A great formula, in my opinion, but a formula nonetheless.

There are many more early films by Miike headed this way, and many of these, I suspect, will be much like Full Metal Yakuza -- stories told in a straight-up style with a view for pleasing an audience, rather than a cult.

While it is no "American Cyborg," FMY is a rip-snortin' 100% straight-to-video exploitation venture by a skilled filmmaker who manages to more than meet the requirements of the genre. The story concerns a Yakuza who awakes from what had seemed to be certain death to find that he now has a body that is partially steel, partially his own, and partially made from the parts of his dead sempai...can you guess? Yes, we are going to have a revenge tale. And, as silly as it is, it's a lot less goofy (and will no doubt age better) than that overpraised pastiche of revenge tales, Kill Bill.

Grab a six-pack, pop some corn, and forget about meaning while Uncle Takashi spins what is without doubt the best scifi Yakuza tale of the 20th Century.

Full Metal Yakuza is a blatantly corny direct-to-video action movie, but I am enthralled by its hero, an aspiring yakuza, made to clean on his hands and knees by the very guys he idolizes, unable to achieve an erection when he's lucky enough to bed down sexy gang molls, bullied by young street punks who would be pulverized by any other yakuza, and then killed as a result of a double-cross. One understands, as one does with similar movies like RoboCop, The Guyver and other movies about a superhuman rebirth, that the premise of the movie is that his body finds itself in the hands of a scientist who keeps him alive by replacing much of his body with robotic body parts. So he has colossal strength and robotic genitalia. He then seeks revenge.

I was excited for him the way one is always cheaply stimulated by movies like this. But Miike, freed by the exploitative invitations of the blood-and-guts shoot-em-up video market in which he is working here, gets the inclination to go crazy, but in the direction opposite the one in which he normally goes. We go from slam-bang gangster cyborg vendetta to hues of more elevated art-house elements characteristic of Japanese cinema elements, such as the scene at the beach after a refusal to kill a gang boss. Outside of this movie's genus, violence and revenge are never as aloof and zany as they are within it, and Miike has certainly done leagues better with the same subject matter, as with Izo and Ichi the Killer.

The movie leaves us with the sort of jarringly extreme material that Miike regales later in his career, but with more directly exploitative ends. It's not that the movie combats any real analysis. It simply shrugs at the idea of significance, not caring enough to be remembered. And perhaps I wouldn't feel so apathetic about that if I didn't begin with such investment in the underdog protagonist.

Full Metal Yakuza (Full Metal Gokudô) 1997 Not Rated

This quaint little movie is one of the first by infamous Japanese director Takeshi Miike. A director known well in Japan for his work on Yakuza (Japanese Mafia) movies—but well known worldwide for his bizarre and shocking "horror" films. This is one of his unusual combination films. It's a Yakuza story, with elements of horror, science fiction, Mafia pictures, and Robocop.

The story revolves around one of Japan's crappiest Yakuza underlings, who, of course, wishes he was more. The head of his, uh, "mafia gang" has taken a liking to him regardless of his grandiose incompetence. Eventually, both are killed, then rebuilt a la Robocop into: "Full Metal Yakuza!" That's right, they're rebuilt into one mostly robotic super-Yakuza warrior—that's primarily the mind and personality of the wimpy warrior. Complete with appetite for nuts-n-bolts dragging around his gigantic penis. Go ahead, reread that sentence. You read right. The new RoboYakuza eats hardware like nuts, bolts, screws, nails, what-have-you for energy. And, he has a huge wang. Well, anyway, he goes around fighting and killing people that were enemies to him and his Yakuza master before they were killed. So it's a revenge story, too. One with cheesy dialog, rampant violence, amusing characters, and laughably horrible special effects. Movies made for PBS don't often look this bad! But the film is decently fun to sit through, so long as you like cheesy Yakuza movies, constant violence, and Takeshi Miike. But keep in mind, this has exceedingly low production value, and is cheesier than Wisconsin. 5/10

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I've already seen Takashi Miike's 'Fudoh: The New Generation', 'Visitor Q' and 'Ichi The Killer' so I'm prepared for just about anything from this amazingly prolific and eclectic director. But as 'Full Metal Yakuza' is an early Miike movie, made with a small budget for the direct to video market, I expected it to be a throwaway action comedy with little evidence of Miike's future brilliance. However, much to my delight, it actually still managed to surprise me, and despite being a cheap riff on 'RoboCop' (one of my all time favourite movies) Miike doesn't play it safe, and you can see bits of 'Ichi the Killer' in there waiting to burst out. This was Miike's twentieth(!) movie give or take, and despite having already released his breakthrough film 'Fudoh' it was still a long way before he was to be discovered by Western movie buffs in a big way. Miike was mainly working in the direct to video market which at the time gave film makers a lot of creative freedom if they made low budget genre movies that were able to sell a few thousand copies. He certainly took advantage of that freedom as the movie mixes silly comedy, bloody fight scenes, tacky special effects and costumes with a brutal gang rape sequence which Hollywood action directors just couldn't have gotten away with. Miike says he wanted the audience to be confused in how they were supposed to react and I think he succeeds big time! There are a few familiar faces in the cast from other Miike movies and those by Beat Takeshi and Shinya Tsukamoto, but the star Tsuyoshi Ujiki was unfamiliar to me. In Japan he is best known as a rock star with Kodomo Band. Uliki plays Hagane a bumbling low level yakuza who is killed when he gets caught in an assassination attempt on his boss whom he worships. But in fact Hagane doesn't die, he is resurrected by an eccentric scientist who has created a new body for him made out of a combination of metal and spare parts supplied from his dead boss! The rest you just have to see to believe. Hagane is far from your typical Yazuza tough guy, and in many ways you can see his character as being a dummy run for Ichi. 'Full Metal Yakuza' isn't quite as amazing as 'Fudoh' or 'Ichi' but it's still pretty out there and highly recommended to fans of extreme Asian action.

Guess that in potential this could had been a truly awesome and insane revenge flick but the movie instead goes for a more over-the-top and comedy like approach. It doesn't really has the desired effect, since it more often makes the movie just silly instead of entertaining or funny.

Normally I either really love or truly dislike a Takashi Miike movie but in this case I'm stuck in the middle somewhere. I really didn't hated the movie but at the same time was also never impressed- or entertained enough by it.

Because the movie takes a more comedic approach, it's also being a more simplistic one to watch. It's very straight-forward, without any good depth or underlying emotions to the movie its story and themes. It's why the movie feels like a bit of a bland one, as well as redundant, even for the fans of Takashi Miike movies.

For a Takashi Miike movie it also certainly isn't edgy enough. It sounds weird, with all of the violence and gore in this movie but the movie feels quite tame and like it's holding back with its graphic violence. This is something Takashi Miike normally really never ever does! But it's a movie from before the days he became an established name really, so it perhaps isn't so surprising that this movie doesn't feel as edgy and daring as most of his later work.

Another problem I really had with this movie was its story. To say it bluntly; this movie really seems to be a Japanese remake of "RoboCop". It uses a very similar concept and even some of the characters and sequences seem alike. So originality was also a big problem with this movie. And as a matter of fact, it makes the movie even weaker, considering that it isn't even halve as good or half as edgy and daring as Paul Verhoeven's "RoboCop". It makes this movie feel like a bit of a lame rip-off attempt.

But despite all criticism, this is still a movie you could have some fun with. It's definitely entertaining to watch in parts and with a Takashi Miike movie you are always getting something unique and unusual. The movie is still filled with plenty of moments like that. So despite not being to original with its story, it still is at least being original with some of its scene's.

6/10

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