njmollo Shin jingi no hakaba/Graveyard of Honor (2002) is a Yakuza movie with a thoroughly despicable leading character. This in itself is the problem because it is impossible for the audience to have any sympathy for such a degraded and demonic personality. There is most certainly a violence about the leading character that is effortlessly translated. You never know when he will explode into violence and every character that comes into his trajectory has a good probability of being harmed. The film is shot on a cheap format, digital presumably and while Takashi's talent for setting, framing and action is on display, there is a disposable quality to the film.There are many of Takashi's obsessions on display in Graveyard of Honor, such as extreme violence, needles and bodily fluids. Takashi does have a disturbing tendency to denigrate woman. A young female character is introduced and promptly raped....If it is understood that great film directors often bear their soul in their work and this is very true of Takashi Miike, it must be said that his treatment of woman as opposed to his adulation of the male, suggests possible homosexual obsession. In his film 46-okunen no koi/Big Bang Love, Juvenile A (2006) homosexuality is explored and the beauty of the male juvenile physique is lovingly shot yet the only female character is a frightening contorted monster (shot in black and white with distorted focus) that literally drags her vagina across the floor.A casual admirer of Takashi's films must admit that women are often the helpless victims of male brutality and while the men often suffer male on male torture and death, the more vile circumstances are reserved for the women, such as drowning in faeces, sex with animals, violent rape and extreme beatings. Takashi's most detailed female character, from his classic Ôdishon/Audition (1999), is a brutalised and psychotic nightmare yet for the male, she is also frightening and at the same time erotic as shown by the sadomasochistic/dominatrix wardrobe. What is clear is that Takashi has a deep fear, possibly a revulsion for women.The action in Graveyard of Honor is brilliantly done, particularly the quick and bloody ashtray attack. The final shooting is superbly done and shows the power of a single bullet much like the movie "Shane" did back in 1952. There are also some brilliant moments such as a sequence of drug induced madness and an almost "love scene" while injecting drugs, both moments are done in single set-ups without cuts.Takashi cannot hide his enormous talent even when directing "trash" or "kiddy nonsense". He is a pure filmmaker and arguably one of the greatest film directors alive today but I sometimes wish he would take more time between movies or be more selective about choosing material because unlike Koroshiya 1/Ichi the Killer (2001) which is beautifully lit and shot, Graveyard of Honor is an ugly florescent looking movie.

MisterWhiplash Takashi Miike has a knack at Yakuza thrillers. Some might not be very good, some might be some odd sorts of deranged masterpieces. But with Graveyard of Honor, I can only imagine how fantastic the original Kinji Fukasaku film from the 70s was if this might possibly be Miike's best "serious" Yakuza movie. This is to say that Miike turns down a somewhat typical level of madcap gore and humor for an approach that is kind of staggering, as though Cassavetes had some input on the screenplay (or Abel Ferrara ala Bad Lieutenant for that matter). It's a solid piece of drama of a man, Rikuo Ishimatsu (in a performance that, within the range, is one of a lifetime from Gorô Kishitani ala young Mifune), who unwittingly becomes apart of a crime family after saving its boss while working as a dishwasher. He serves some time for attempting to kill another gangster, he gets out, the years pass and he gets bitter, and in a fit of panic he bites the hand that feeds him - he shoots his own boss.From here on it's a path right to hell that Ishimatsu takes. Already one has seen him as a character with some demons he has trouble quelling. He's tough, maybe too tough, and doesn't have much of a sense of humor (which includes around his woman, a timid creature who soon gets into the dank mess that Ishimatsu puts himself into). He also turns into a full-fledged junkie, and burns more bridges than one could ever fathom. What Miike crafts here is something that might not be his most inventive work, but it displays him as someone who has the range to plunge into real bloodshed and tragedy. It's almost the reversal of the cartoonish mayhem of Ichi the Killer - where that you almost were given permission to chuckle at the carnage and excess of violence, in Graveyard of Honor it's grim, ugly, the blood flowing hard and with bodies writhing in total agony. It's a rare instance for the director to present things about as realistic as he'll get, in edgy hand-held and compositions.But there is some style that Miike puts, appropriately and with an creative sensibility, on the material. The music crooning on and off is like that of New York jazz from the late 50s and early 60s, and I'm almost reminded of some lucid nightmare of a beatnik on junk ala William S. Burroughs and pulp fiction. As the downward spiral continues for this character, even if it starts to seem unlikely that it would go this far (the escape from prison alone, intense for the self-inflicted horror done to himself, is just enough to swallow), we go right down with this character in his oblivion. It's hard to turn away, and there are moments that are gruesome not so much for what's shown, which can be a lot, but the emotional impact. Not to sound pretentious, but I'm almost reminded of some damned Shakespearan king or something, only here it's a sensibility of total unadulterated nihilism that propels Ishimatsu to his horror of an end.On the surface, it doesn't feel a whole lot different from other Miike Yakuza fare. Yet it's a little maturer, a little more tightly crafted and developed with the characters, and it has the mood of a filmmaker working outside of his reputation as a showman or provocateur. It's a real movie, one of the best in the Yakuza realm.

Polaris_DiB Takeshi Miike is one of my favorite filmmakers, almost for no better reason than that he's the only filmmaker I've ever seen that can set off my gag reflex. Although he shows versatility as a director with dramas like Sabu and children friendly fare like "Zebraman", he is much more well known as the hyper-violent, hyper-gory, and hyper-kinetic director of "Ichi the Killer". "Graveyard of Honor" is another one of his extreme movies. It's not as fast-paced, or even as weird, as "Ichi", but boy, does it deliver.The basic plot is that a dishwasher ends up saving the life of a Yakuza boss when he knocks out an assassin that is shooting up his restaurant. The Yakuza boss thanks him by making him his right-hand man, but the dishwasher turns out to be pretty much a sociopath, showing no fear, regret, or capability for patience, thus resulting in a violent film full of miscommunication and misunderstandings. The best part is that none of the other characters really seem that willing to take him down, so his blunt approach to killing whoever he feels goes pretty much unchecked.However, the movie is pretty slight on the plot. Really, it's more like a continuing cycle of prison-violence-heroin, prison-violence-heroin. If that description gives some pause, especially considering that this movie is over two hours long, have no fear--it's the most interesting cycle of prison-violence-heroin ever filmed, because one of Miike's primary strengths lies in his use of hyperbole. When a character jumps to his death, he doesn't just splatter; a wave of blood washes over a wall. The fascination of the character himself is matched by the deranged trust that most of the other Yakuza place in him. We're almost as attached to him as his wife, who, it seems, he purposefully got addicted to heroin so that she would depend on him.It's also, like many of Miike's works, darkly comedic in a very sick way. Just don't expect to be laughing all that often, as it's more likely you'll be running to the bathroom trying not to vomit. It also sticks with you for a while, unless you're actually as desensitized as the main character is. If that's the case, I recommend finding a nice asylum to live in for a while.--PolarisDiB

Simon Booth BATTLE ROYALE was the movie that brought the name Kinji Fukasaku to the lips of most people in the west for the first time, but he'd made his name in Japan many years earlier with a series of gritty and violent gangster movies that changed the face of the genre. In 1975 he made one such movie, called GRAVEYARD OF HONOR. In 2002, Takashi Miike decided to make a movie called GRAVEYARD OF HONOR too.I haven't seen Fukasaku's original movie, so I have no idea how Miike's version compares. Normally you would expect a Miike movie to bear little resemblance to its source material, but in this case I'm not so sure.GRAVEYARD OF HONOR tells the story of a man called Ishimatsu (Goro Kishitani), who is propelled into a relatively high ranking position in the Yakuza after saving the family head's life. His violent personality makes him feared and perhaps respected, but eventually gets him into trouble. He p***es off the family, and to such a degree that no little finger is going to get him off the hook. The stage is set for a small scale gang war.GRAVEYARD OF HONOR is a much more conventional yakuza movie than any of his others, e.g. DEAD OR ALIVE. It's played pretty much straight, missing the wit and manic invention that characterises Miike at his most playful. Unfortunately, it's also missing the complex 3-dimensional characters that make Miike's more dramatic movies so good. It's a fairly straight genre movie that doesn't scratch particularly deep below the surface, in other words. This may be because Miike wished to stay faithful to the source material, but it is rather a surprise from the director whose work is normally amongst the most inventive in the world. Rather a disappointment, too.Miike can definitely do straight drama, but in movies like RAINY DOG and BLUES HARP it is the fascinating, believable and sympathetic characters that make the films stand out from the crowd. Characters in GRAVEYARD OF HONOR are much harder to relate to, and their intentions and motivations are often unclear or seemingly thin. In particular it's hard to understand Ishimatsu's actions, beyond the facts that he's very violent and not very smart. It's very hard to empathasize or even sympathize with him, and very difficult to actually like or care for him too. Even an anti-hero needs some humanity we can relate to, or at least a shed load of charisma. Goro Kishitani injects his character with neither.I'd been led to expect GRAVEYARD OF HONOR to be somewhat action packed, and there are a few scenes of fairly brutal violence but nothing like the cool stylised action of DEAD OR ALIVE: FINAL. In fact, most of the movie is very slow - rather boring even. I actually took a break for an hour and a half in the middle to go and do some work, which isn't a great sign GRAVEYARD OF HONOR is probably not a bad gangster movie, but it is very disappointing as a Takashi Miike movie. Pretty much any director could have handled the job, and only a couple of scenes show any of Miike's characteristic style, wit or perverse genius. Basically, I'd hoped for something more.Not recommended much.The ebay DVD has a decent anamorphic transfer, presumably ripped from the Japanese release and re-encoded to fit on a DVD-5. Sound is functional stereo, and subtitles are optional and very well translated. If you want to see the movie, this is your best option for now.