Dead or Alive

The first seven minutes of Dead or Alive are frantic, exhilarating, and gleefully incoherent--a splatterfest of blood, bile, and other bodily fluids amidst an orgy of sex, murder and drugs that, ironically, sets the stage for one of Takashi Miike's most restrained films. Set in Tokyo at the end of millennium, the basic and somewhat predictable plot charts a hardboiled cop's (Sho Aikawa) fight to bring down a Chinese mobster (Riki Takeuchi), but what's interesting is the characters themselves, two men whose lives are driven by tragedy, grief, failure, and disappointment. Apart from the frenetic opening, Miike (Audition) approaches much of the film as staid melodrama, relying on static camera positions and careful framing. While this detracts from the almost improvisational energy that normally fuels his films, it also perhaps suggests a growing maturity. Of course, Miike stages the film's shootouts with insanely graphic flair and the film builds to a deus ex machina finale that goes from cartoonish to manically absurd. Recommended. (D. Fienberg)