It’s tough for me to approach a Takashi Miike film without certain preconceived notions that may color my view. I’m not really a fan of his work, and generally find them to be puerile and not particularly entertaining. He simply loads the screen with blood, guts and other inappropriate bodily fluids and insists that it’s clever. However, when I heard that Takeshi Kitano was part of Miike’s next film, “Izo,” I was intrigued. I have liked, or at least appreciated, the Kitano films I’ve seen, so I had hopes that this union of titans may come out well. I should have known better.
The first sign of trouble comes in the form of that last resort for heavy-handed hacks — stock footage. It ruined “Casshern”, was the weakest part of “Save The Green Planet” and “The 5th Element”, and “Izo” is peppered with them — everything from birth films to the usual WWII battle footages. The introductory montage segues into the film proper, which opens by lifting the closing sequence from Hideo Gosha’s “Hitokiri”, with the titular anti-hero, historical mass murderer Izo Okada (Kazuya Nakayama), being crucified in Tokugawa-era Japan. Miike barely lets the oil warm up before hitting the throttle, and we get to see Izo repeatedly run through with spears in loving, bladder evacuating detail, a scene that sets the tone for the rest of the film.
“Izo” consists of a series of set pieces that jump from scene to scene, recalling the structure of “Pistol Opera,” except here Izo jumps back and forth through time fighting hordes of evil agents from random time periods. He rumbles with modern SWAT commandos in an 1800’s neighborhood, Meiji-era police in the back alleys of modern day Tokyo, and vampiric insurance salesmen in some primeval cave. Throughout the proceedings, the film cuts to a secluded cabal of historical authority figures as they cogitate on the irrationality of Izo’s existence — something to do with Izo’s grudge against the authority that made him into a murderer in real life, yet sentenced him to death for those very acts.
Three-fourth of the way into “Izo”, I came to the realization that I felt about “Izo” the same way I felt about “Kichiku.” The two films are surprisingly similar in content, and both purport to convey some sort of message about man’s proclivity towards inflicting horrible violence upon his fellow man in order to gain authority. I don’t know, maybe that blood-soaked sliced Daikon radish was supposed to be a symbol of man’s impotence in the face of violence. However, Miike gets so hung up in beating the audience over the head with the violence part that he forgets the message. As a result, “Izo” becomes an endurance test not of the viewer’s stomach, but of the viewer’s patience, which is the cardinal sin for any film. At least “Kichiku” had the good sense to pull its own plug at around 90 minutes, whereas “Izo” lumbers on for an interminable 128 minutes.
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http://rapidshare.com/files/30587098/IZO.part01.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/30587946/IZO.part02.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/30587114/IZO.part03.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/30587124/IZO.part04.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/30587807/IZO.part05.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/30587750/IZO.part06.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/30587151/IZO.part07.rar
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http://rapidshare.com/files/30586534/IZO.part09.rar
