Criticature: "Graveyard of Honor" ("Shin ingi no hakaba")

Peek-a-boo.

In honor (heh) of the stateside release of Takashi Miike’s newest film, I felt compelled to immerse myself in his canon beforehand. For those of you unfamiliar with said auteur’s body of work, just know that it is often disturbing, visceral and—more often than not—masterful, surprising and perversely fun.

The character study: after casually foiling an attempted hit on a crime boss, Rikuo—a dead-eyed dishwasher—is inducted into the gang as an honorary strong man. Yet the mobsters get more than they bargained for when they come to learn just how crazy he really is. Whether he’s raping hostesses at karaoke bars or shooting it out with the police in his underwear, there seems to be nothing the man can’t or won't do. And as Rikuo’s penchant for slow-burn sociopathic mayhem spills back onto his masters, it becomes quite clear that Rikuo has no room for friends in his life. Only the bodies of his enemies—real or perceived—which he leaves stacked at his knees.

Yet this is not really an action movie. If you’re expecting Hong Kong-style leaps and bounds you’re looking in the wrong place.

A jazzy reimagining of Kinji Fukasaku’s 1975 yakuza flick, Miike’s version is punctuated by Goro Kishitani’s lurid yet stony smirk. Here, Miike trades non-stop action for tedium and apathy, spiking those moments with his signature brand of sucker-punch violence in order to catalogue Rikuo’s vicious fall from grace. The end result is something like the cardiogram of a man taking a swan dive from skyscraper. The closest thing I can compare it to is Harvey Keitel’s unhinged detective in 1992’s “Bad Lieutenant”.

This is one hedonistic journey to hell you shouldn’t do without.

***

Directed by:
Takashi Miike

Written by:
Gorô Fujita ... novel
Shigenori Takechi ... screenplay

Produced by:
Michinao Kai ... assistant producer
Mitsuru Kurosawa ... executive producer: Toei Video
Shigeji Maeda
Fujio Matsushima ... planner
Fujio Matsushima ... supervising producer
Hitoki Ookoshi ... line producer
Tsuneo Seto ... supervising planner
Shigenori Takechi ... planner
Ken Takeuchi ... supervising planner
Tsutomu Tsuchikawa ... executive producer: Daiei
Kazuyuki Yokoyama

Cast:
Narimi Arimori ... Chieko Kikuta
Yoshiyuki Daichi ... Yoshiyuki Ooshita
Hirotarô Honda ... Correctional officer
Harumi Inoue ... Yôko Imamura
Renji Ishibashi ... Denji Yukawa
Gorô Kishitani ... Rikuo Ishimatsu
Shigeo Kobayashi
Takashi Miike ... Restaurant gunman
Ryôsuke Miki ... Kôzô Imamura
Yasukaze Motomiya ... Kanemoto
Mikio Oosawa ... Masato Yoshikawa
Daisuke Ryuu ... Tadaaki Kuze
Harumi Sone ... Ryuuzô Fukui
Shun Sugata ... Toshi Nishizaki
Tetsurô Tanba ... Tetsuji Tokura
Yoshiyuki Yamaguchi ... Shigeru Hashida
Shingo Yamashiro ... Shinobu Sawada
Shinji Yamashita ... Masaru Narimura
Rikiya ... Aoyama