Japanese Reviews Reviews The Takashi Miike Project (106/116 complete)

Film Review: Dead Or Alive 2: Birds (2000) by Takashi Miike

Dead or Alive 2 Sho Aikawa RIki Takeuchi

As we mentioned in the review of the first part of the trilogy, the influence of Kitano was small but significant. This time, however, it is much more evident (from “Sonatine”), although the preposterousness that characterizes Miike’s style, still manages to dominate a large part of the film.

Buy This Title 

Two contract killers, blonde-haired and quirky Mizuki Okamoto and cool and silent Shuuichi Sawada meet with each other by accident, during a “job” and soon realize that they are childhood friends. Their reunion propels them into travelling to the island they grew up together. As they reminisce the past and meet up with old friends, they learn a number of shuttering news and eventually take a big decision: to start killing for… charity, giving their earnings to the poor children of the world. Their decision, though, brings them against their old employers, the crime syndicates.

This time, Miike has toned down the absurdity for a large part of the film, mainly placed in the middle of the story, when the two protagonists reach their home-island. This part, which comprises mostly of them meeting old friends and reminiscing about the past, is the one that mostly reminded me of Kitano’s “Sonatine”, particularly regarding the setting and the presentation of the “soft” side of two protagonists. Miike even takes this concept a step further, by including a number of flashbacks where the two are children, mostly playing in the sand. Through this part, Miike shows the difference between the lives the two used to live and the ones they live now, but also highlights the path that led them to their current one.

This difference, of their past and their present, forms the most central axis in the film, with Miike “exploiting” it repeatedly, through a rather interesting tactic of cutting from the calm past to the violent present in successive scenes.  Yasushi Shimamura’s excellent editing finds its apogee in these sequences, as does the whole film, actually.

Of course, the absurdity could not be missing completely, and Miike has his protagonists with wings on their back embarking on some impossible “quests,” and the final battle is definitely over the board, as is their whole “killing for charity” concept, for that matter. Nevertheless, Miike also makes a point of showing that no action is without consequence, with the path that leads to the finale proving just that.

Kazunari Tanaka’s cinematography is quite good, highlighting both the calm and the violent scenes equally, while the flashbacks are filled with images of a nostalgic beauty.

as the quirky, blonde-haired, man-child and the always cool (and sometimes even smiling) as Shuichi are great in their respective parts, highlighting their chemistry in the best way. The fact that they also change their personalities completely, again from calm and almost regular to violent and extreme without any kind of deterioration in their performance, is a testament to the quality of their work. Also of note is the presence of as Okamoto’s boss, who happens to conduct circus/clown tricks, in one of the most cult aspects of the film.

” is the most “tame” part of the trilogy, but also a film that highlights Miike’s ability to direct (or include elements of if you prefer) movies that are not based on violence or the extreme, but manage to present their comments through beauty and character development, for a part at least.

 

About the author

Panos Kotzathanasis

Panagiotis (Panos) Kotzathanasis is a film critic and reviewer, specialized in Asian Cinema. He is the owner and administrator of Asian Movie Pulse, one of the biggest portals dealing with Asian cinema. He is a frequent writer in Hancinema, Taste of Cinema, and his texts can be found in a number of other publications including SIRP in Estonia, Film.sk in Slovakia, Asian Dialogue in the UK, Cinefil in Japan and Filmbuff in India.

Since 2019, he cooperates with Thessaloniki Cinematheque in Greece, curating various tributes to Asian cinema. He has participated, with video recordings and text, on a number of Asian movie releases, for Spectrum, Dekanalog and Error 4444. He has taken part as an expert on the Erasmus+ program, “Asian Cinema Education”, on the Asian Cinema Education International Journalism and Film Criticism Course.

Apart from a member of FIPRESCI and the Greek Cinema Critics Association, he is also a member of NETPAC, the Hellenic Film Academy and the Online Film Critics Association.

Subscribe to Our Newsletter

>