Film: Deadly Outlaw: Rekka
Release date: 8th November 2010
Certificate: 18
Running time: 96 mins
Director: Takashi Miike
Starring: Riki Takeuchi, Sonny Chiba, Joe Yamanaka, Yuya Ichida, Ken'ichi Endô
Genre: Crime/Drama/Thriller
Studio: Arrow
Format: DVD
Country: Japan
A yakuza film is bread and butter for Takashi Miike, and Deadly Outlaw: Rekka (Jitsuroku Andô Noboru kyôdô-den: Rekka), sandwiched between the sadistic violence of Ichi The Killer and the surrealism of Gozu, is surprisingly ordinary when compared with much of the director’s oeuvre. However, the straightforward nature of this 2002 film is the essence of its charm.
When Kunisada’s (Riki Takeuchi) yakuza boss and mentor Sanada (Yuya Uchida) is murdered, he plans vengeance despite the new leaders seeking a truce between the clans. With his best friend and side-kick Shimatani (Kenichi Endo), the hot-headed henchman takes revenge on opposing families and goes on the run.
However, he soon finds the plot runs a little deeper and no-one can be trusted, not even the bosses who secretly sanctioned his revenge. Cue yakuza renegade action as Kunisada takes his fight to everyone en route to a climactic shoot-out with the assassins who killed his mentor…
The narrative is a straight-forward revenge story set in the murky world of organised crime, and, with a running time of 95 minutes, Miike is in no mood to meander through Shigenori Takechi’s screenplay. The opening montage gets the film out of the blocks at a blistering, breathtaking pace as Miike chops between the hit men riddling yakuza with bullets and Kunisada (in police custody for a minor crime) feeling something is wrong, and desperately trying to escape.
Although the film never again reaches the whirlwind pace of the first sequence, quick cuts and an economic script ensure the viewer is just as breathless throughout. Even before the shoot-outs get going, when much of the action is just discussion between yakuza in grotty apartments, the film has an all pervading intensity to it.
This effect is down in no small way to the soundtrack. The music, provided by Japanese psych-punk outfit Flower Travellin’ Band with their album ‘Satori’, drives the action with fast, thrashy riffs. Juxtaposed with the dialogue and the occasional outright silence, the contrast gives every scene a focus and concentration.
This intensity is mirrored in the performance of Takeuchi, whose apoplectic Kunisada boils with rage, sometimes hidden below a serene surface, at other times bubbling over completely. For instance, when rival yakuza members taunt him early in the film, he reacts by brutally killing several of them in public. Indeed, Kunisada is so angry and so intense, his emotions and actions seem exaggerated, and this sense of farcical hyperbole runs through the film.
Despite the bloodshed from start to finish, it is never gratuitous or graphic, as in other Miike films; rather the intermittent and overblown violence is a source of morbid humour. This is especially true towards the climax, where the vengeful pair’s weapons have inexplicable explosive strength, resulting in a decent into goofiness akin to cartoon violence.
The director’s often surreal and dark sense of humour makes a few appearances in the film, in particular with the two assassins behind the original murder played by Ryôsuke Miki and Yoshiyuki Yamaguchi. The unlikely partners in crime, one mature and methodical and one young and wild, are a classic double act with a Miike twist, and their complete indifference to life and death in their work is a source of sinister amusement from the very beginning.
Despite the light touch in much of the film, Deadly Outlaw: Rekka is not entirely devoid of substance. It depicts the majority of yakuza life with gritty realism, staying away from plush Tokyo penthouses furnished in black marble, and avoiding the overtly stylish directing which often accompanies films tackling the glamorous side of gangster life. Instead our heroes and those in their sights live in cramped apartments and sit on old dirty furniture, giving the film a bleak, colour-washed tone.
There are moments of genuine tenderness, too, through the loss of a father and husband, the camaraderie of the low-ranking yakuza, and the loyalty of the young men they inspire. Tender also in the unexplored but desperate melancholy of the young girl Myung Hyung, played by Mika Katsumura, whom Kunisada picks up before embarking on his quest.
It is a film with all the hallmarks of a classic gangster caper. It has revenge and violence, black humour and pathos, the small take on the mighty and morality is at best a blurred lined. Despite this adherence to genre, it is by no means a run of the mill film. Its wackiness, which could be mishandled in less capable and creative hands, gives it a freshness and originality in such familiar territory. It is a pulp yakuza movie and fan-boy homage to the genre’s straight-to-video market in a similar vein to the Grindhouse movies of Tarantino and Rodriguez, only Miike did it five years earlier and without so much self-congratulatory fanfare.
Deadly Outlaw: Rekka is such unabashed fun it will leave you feeling indulgent and sporting a maniacal grin from start to finish, just like the one, you might imagine subsequent to viewing, Miike wore while making it. Concentrated to an hour-and-a-half, as so few recent films are, it hits you like a shot of pure audio-visual entertainment straight in the arm. GC
