Blues Harp

The intros are among some of the best pieces of cinema Takashi Miike produced around the late-Nineties and Millennium period. The brutal baseball attack to kick-off "Fudoh: The New Generation" and the film within a montage that introduces us to the "Dead or Alive" Trilogy. Coming a year earlier than the latter, 1998's "Blues Harp" also shows a whole condensed into a rock montage, with clips from throughout the film interspersed with Atsushi Okuno's performance on stage to get the octane levels up. Seeing Miike's lower-budget works as forerunners for ideas in his larger-scale pieces, "Blues Harp" is another, more minor, work that would see similar themes explored later on.

Chuji, born in Okinawa to a Japanese prostitute and African-American soldier, is a barman in a dive bar and music venue in the US navy base town of Yokosuka. A low-level drug dealer, he chances upon Kenji, an ambitious young yakuza in the alley behind the bar, saving Kenji from a beating from his rivals. For this, Kenji is eternally grateful, and chooses to lookout for Chuji as much as he can.

But Kenji is also a man out for himself, and wishes to dethrone is family head, using an affair with his wife to give him the opportunity to seize power. Chuji also sees a bright future ahead: his dabbling with a harmonica, encouraged by the house band, gets heard by a talent scout who wants to offer him a record contract, his bosses' approval pending; as well as his girlfriend announcing she is pregnant.

Things come to a head on one fateful Thursday. Yakuza (and their women's) double-crossings rife, Kenji's plans are soon thwarted and the jealousy of his younger "brother" sees him use Chuji's drug dealing past to blackmail him into being the lacky in Kenji's plans, potentially damaging his future music career, and future full stop.

While a violent film, this is not typical Miike: here the violence is more straight, compared to the more extreme and comic cases seen in his other films. At face-value, this is a fairly standard yakuza tale of backstabbing, teaching us to never trust a yakuza. But the character of Chuji, played by Kiroyuki Ikeuchi, adds a little something extra to the film.

Mixed-race, Chuji represents something of a changing face of Japan. Kenji comments that Chuji is an old-fashioned name, but his lifestyle is anything but. A more Westernised, low-level street dealer, he is a far cry from the organised, "business" face of the yakuza. An early incarnation of the slacker staple now frequent in Japanese cinema, as critiqued my Mark Schilling, he lives in an area populated by graffiti, immigrants, back streets and the homeless, and dreams of a career in blues music. Adopting a homeless, black US soldier as a surrogate father figure, he is a lost soul in an industrialised cityscape emerging from the Nineties decline.

Kenji also offers a twist on yakuza meat and drink, with his affection for Chuji more than simply friendship. Catching an early glimpse of his young rear end, Kenji's hidden homosexuality manifests in his looking out for Chuji and aggressive teeth-brushing following each sexual encounter with his boss' wife, showing a touch more subtlety from Miike.

Music is also important to "Blues Harp" with live performances essentially shown in full alongside storylines, with a mix of rock, blues and hip hop on stage at the bar where Chuji works.

But, as an earlier work in Miike's post-V-cinema career, this is a film not without its flaws. The less established cast, incorporating musicians, naturally, doesn't always mean particularly classic acting. Chuji can come across more funny than funky in his live performances, Ikeuchi perhaps overdoing his blues harp miming a little.

But typical of this era, it also sees Miike experimenting throughout, with ideas and themes that would be reprised later in his career in bigger-scale projects. As such, while not a particularly standout work, this is in some ways Miike at his best, and more low-key works such as "Blues Harp" would have been welcomed in a career that has often gone to extremes.

Yakuza Apocalypse (BFI 59th London Film Festival)

Takashi Miike isn't quite as prolific as he used to be at his height around fifteen years ago. Now, he works to a casual two or three films a year, rather than his exhausting six or seven on the early Naughties. But, has the drop in quantity resulted in a upturn in quality?

Miike films have always been up and down in terms of quality, switching from bigger budget films, like 'Audition' and 'Ichi the Killer' to low-rent, low quality dross, such as 'Silver' or 'Family'. But this was always Miike's charm. The switching of budget, writers, cast, styles and genres resulted in a lot of experimenting, with ideas from the bad benefiting the good.

Now established and of international renown, his films come with anticipation and expectation - maybe to his films' detriment. He could make a bad film before, and no one would realise. Now if he does we'll all hear about it. Recent films, such as '13 Assassins', 'For Love's Sake, 'Hara-kiri' and 'Lessons of Evil' show a more established director, trusted with bigger budgets and international film festival screenings. And while these have their moments, they are not quite as fun and inventive as his earlier works.

'Yakuza Apocalypse' is his latest film to come with a hint of anticipation as to what might be. With his need to cover each and every genre, we now see him take on the vampire film, set among the yakuza. Kamiura is a local yakuza boss, with the respect of those around him. But he has a secret: he's a yakuza vampire, if there is such a thing. This, however, attracts some unwanted attention, and he is destroyed by his rivals. Though before his demise, he bites his loyal lieutenant, Kageyama, transferring his powers unto him. Seen as a Matrix-style 'The One' , he sets about getting revenge, though by this point, ordinary civilians have turned into yakuza vampires themselves, creating a world of chaos where the old, everyday yakuza have no place.

Being a vampire film, this is of course very silly, with moments that make me largely avoid ever watching films of this ilk, actors tested in their ability to give the most stupid of performances with a straight face. This does add a sense of fun to the film and comparisons to his Nineties films 'Fudoh' and 'Full metal Yakuza' can be made, taking a more zany and comic-book approach to the yakuza genre. Indeed, 'Yakuza Apocalypse' very much feels like it could have been a manga, and I'm surprised one hasn't yet been made - to the best of my knowledge, anyway.

However, the aforementioned films had a bit more edge to them than 'Yakuza Apocalypse'. There's something about the handheld camerawork and straight-to-video feel of these films that suits the more outlandish style, rather than the big sets and production values of his more recent films. The kappa and costumed characters are fun, but feel a bit weird for the sake of being weird, perhaps over-used to the point where it can become a bit farcical. The final fight scene between Kageyama and 'The Raid 2's' Yayan Ruhian is unnecessarily overdrawn, with little real action and suits as a disappointing end, a far cry from the unexpected and instant conclusion of 'Dead or Alive'.

But if you take away any serious attempts at analysis, this is a fun film, with a little bit of everything thrown in. The cast is full of known people, with Hayato Ichihara looking suitably half alive as Kageyama throughout and appearing-everywhere-now Kiyohiko Shibukawa expressing his full range of bemused faces.  

At his best, Miike's films are easily watchable over and over. His more recent films, while enjoyable on first viewing, are less repeatable, and so it will remain to be seen whether 'Yakuza Apocalypse' sits nicely alongside his extensive catalogue of experiments that, while varying in quality, always create curiosity.