| Plot |
A daring exercise in ultra-violent extremes.
A prostitute plunges to her death clutching a bag of drugs, a furtive men's room tryst climaxes in a geyser of blood, an after-dinner shotgun blast graphically puts a new spin on bulimia, a stripper writhes, a mysterious knife thrower takes aim and a gangster snorts a line of white powder stretching to infinity...and that's merely the first ten minutes. From Taskashi Miike (Audition,Ichi the Killer), "one of the most exciting, versatile directors working today" (NY Post), comes a film of such kaleidoscopic mayhem and frenzied violence that it defies hyperbole. Burlesquing and surpassing every other full-bore, double-barreled Asian crime thriller, Dead Or Alive conjures up a harrowing urban fever-dream where "the images are so astonishing, you'll feel you inhaled them." (SF Examiner)
In Tokyo's crime ridden Shinjuku district, emotionally and financially bankrupt Detective Jojima (Show Aikawa) plays referee in a gangland turf war pitting the Japanese Yakuza Mafia against a bloodthirsty band of Chinese immigrant gangsters. But Jojima's obligation to his terminally ill daughter and ruthless Chinese mobster Ryuichi's (Riki Takeuchi) sentimental devotion to his ersatz family of misfit assassins threatens to add their own corpses to the landslide of fresh bodies littering Tokyo. Miike depicts Dead Or Alive's gruesome acts of excess and debasement with shockingly graphic relish, allowing his vision to escalate beyond even a cartoonish level of audacity. |
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