An off-the-cuff Japanese gangster movie with an absurdist streak that shades into surrealism,
Dead or Alive 2 isn't thrown by its brief to sequelise a film that ended not only with the deaths of its lead characters but the destruction of Japan. Takashi Miike--the prolific auteur whose best-known film is the atypically considered
Audition--brings back his lead actors in different roles and spins off another strange shaggy dog tale. The film starts out with a Yakuza vs Triads gang war in the offing, then sidesteps into "'Beat"' Miike territory as a couple of hit-men who meet when they turn up for the same assassination turn out to be childhood friends and enjoy a nostalgic wallow as they return to the orphanage where they met, re-encounter other old pals and even stand in for some injured actors putting on a play for the children.
White-suited and terminally ill Sawada (Riki Takeuchi) and bleached blond and Hawaiian-shirted Otamoko (Sho Aikawa) get back to gunplay, committing contract murders and funnelling the profits into third world charities, which earns them occasional angel-wings or transformations back into innocent children. In constant danger of collapse, the film keeps pulling surprises: txt msg-addicted killers, an animated diagram of bullet trajectories through an unfortunate dwarf's brain. The first film blew up the country because it couldn't think of an ending, and this also has a lot of trouble signing off, with protracted deaths and redemptions for the heroes. Miike alternates clumsiness and confusion with exciting and powerful cinema. --Kim Newman
Product Description
Miike Takashi's follow-up to his ultra-violent 1999 'Dead or Alive'. Otamoko is a hired killer who accepts the contract to assassinate a vicious gangster, but is beaten to it by another assassin, who carries out the job before he gets the chance. Otamoko nevertheless decides to take the money anyway, and soon finds himself on the run, with both the Traids and Yakuza following in hot pursuit. When he reaches the island of the birth, he teams up with an old friend and together they resolve to rid the world of evil.
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