Product Description Special Features Star and Director Filmographies Scene Selection Original Trailer Miike Takashi Interview Chris Campion Film Notes Asia Extreme Trailer Reel Feature Length: 105 mins Approx Video Aspect Ratio: Anamorphic Widescreen Disc Format: PAL DVD 5 Region code: 0 Language: Japanese Subtitles: English From Amazon.co.uk The director of Dead or Alive, Takashi Miike, made his name on the international scene with Audition, a chilling psychological thriller that builds from a quiet start towards a prolonged torture sequence almost too unbearable to watch. But such deliberate pacing isn't typical of Miike, whose movies often assault the viewer with an onslaught of slam-bang action that makes John Woo look like Eric Rohmer. Dead or Alive, his most successful cops-vs-yakuza thriller to date, kicks off with six non-stop minutes of machine gun-paced violence, sex and slaughter, all set to a pounding heavy-metal beat. Thereafter things calm down a little, though not much. Given Miike's penchant for murky, livid-toned visuals and skewed camera angles, it's not always too easy to work out exactly who's doing what to whom, but the general outline's clear enough. The Tokyo underworld is being torn apart by a turf war between the yakuza gangs and the invading Chinese triads. Ambitious yakuza member Ryuichi isn't above playing both sides off against each other in his bid for power, while police detective Jojima, himself none too scrupulous in his methods, is out to destroy the gangs. Into this conventional plot framework Miike piles enough warped characters and bizarre, twisted happenings to fuel half-a-dozen Tarantino movies, while cheerfully borrowing--and inflating--key moments from such hard-boiled gangster-noirs as The Big Heat and Kiss Me Deadly. One character deep-fries his own hand, a stripper is drowned in a paddling-pool filled with her own excrement, and the literally apocalyptic finale, the showdown to end all showdowns, will leave you gasping. The appallingly prolific Miike, who regularly makes about five movies a year, has since directed two sequels--the first only three months after the original.--Philip Kemp From the Back Cover Welcome to Shinjuku - city of darkness and corruption. Here rapid-fire shoot-outs and twisted acts of perverse violence provide the backdrop for a Vicious war between the Japanese Yakuza and the Chinese Triads, and make for one of the most dizzying and spectacular openings ever committed to film. Ryuichi is a gangster who is driven by a desire for power and the memory of his deprived childhood. His younger brother, Toji, has returned form studying in the U.S. Between them, they are about to learn some harsh lessons about life on the wrong side of the law. Meanwhile, detective Jojima finds himself drawn deeper into the world of the Yakuza as he continues to make dirty deals he hopes will help raise the money to pay for his daughter's life-saving operation.

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