A pretty standard, clichéd gangster / cop movie livened up by Miike's usual taboo-baiting, wildly excessive ultra-violence and sex.
After a count-in to the film from the lead characters themselves, foreshadowing the questionable "reality" of the film's climax, Miike opens with a dizzying dose of his trademark sadism and hedonism, which sets up the basic narrative facts of the film. The majority of the actual plot of the film, I found to be often incoherent or incomprehensible but with enough action and exposition to vaguely know what was going on. The main characters are quite well developed also, Sho Aikawa's veteran policeman facing a huge medical bill for his daughter's operation and a failing marriage. Riki Takeuchi certainly looks the part as the head of a rag-tag bunch of criminals brave, or foolish, enough to take on both the police and Japanese mafia and who funds his younger brother's education in the US with his criminal activities. I only realised later, on reading a few reviews, that the gang weren't actually Chinese, but from Japanese families stranded in China, and apparently rejected by both societies and left with no national identity, giving their audacious, near-suicidal, actions that extra bit of depth.
It is only towards the end, with a BIG surprise car explosion that the film truly takes off, introducing a similar cop/criminal dynamic between the protagonists as in Michael Mann's "Heat" or Kurosawa's "Stray Dog". The cataclysmic ending itself is totally genre-defying but compared to the relatively routine plot which precedes it is actually very entertaining and darkly comic.
After a count-in to the film from the lead characters themselves, foreshadowing the questionable "reality" of the film's climax, Miike opens with a dizzying dose of his trademark sadism and hedonism, which sets up the basic narrative facts of the film. The majority of the actual plot of the film, I found to be often incoherent or incomprehensible but with enough action and exposition to vaguely know what was going on. The main characters are quite well developed also, Sho Aikawa's veteran policeman facing a huge medical bill for his daughter's operation and a failing marriage. Riki Takeuchi certainly looks the part as the head of a rag-tag bunch of criminals brave, or foolish, enough to take on both the police and Japanese mafia and who funds his younger brother's education in the US with his criminal activities. I only realised later, on reading a few reviews, that the gang weren't actually Chinese, but from Japanese families stranded in China, and apparently rejected by both societies and left with no national identity, giving their audacious, near-suicidal, actions that extra bit of depth.
It is only towards the end, with a BIG surprise car explosion that the film truly takes off, introducing a similar cop/criminal dynamic between the protagonists as in Michael Mann's "Heat" or Kurosawa's "Stray Dog". The cataclysmic ending itself is totally genre-defying but compared to the relatively routine plot which precedes it is actually very entertaining and darkly comic.