For all its berserk energy, you will need a very particular sense of humour not to lose patience with the prolific Takashi Miike’s latest, which goes under the highly encouraging title Yakuza Apocalypse. Miike, of course, is known for churning out an average of three films a year since the early 90s; and was unable to attend this Cannes screening due to having started work on the next one. However, he did send over an amusing short video message apologising for his absence, in which he appeared in full geisha drag, saying that he had switched professions and would never make violent films again.
That, in truth, was the evening’s high point. When the film itself got underway, it began promisingly enough: Miike whipped up a series of his trademark gruesome fight scenes, as he followed a local crime boss, Kiamura, piloting a young protege, Kagayama, through his neighbourhood – only for us to realise that Kiamura is some sort of vampire yakuza, munching on people’s necks just as they thank him for protecting their business from rival goons. Kiamura can’t resist Kagayama’s perfectly-chiselled throat either, and he becomes turned too – though not before introducing us to the film’s first bit of bizarro comedy business: a basement full of men handcuffed to a set of tables while obsessively knitting. Why ask why?
Pretty soon, Miike has shoehorned in more plot strands than you can count, and his film lurches wildly, and seemingly at random between them. Vampirism spreads through the locals like a plague, one chomping another in quick succession, with “civilians” transforming to blood-gulping “yakuza” in the blink of an eye. (The remaining (uninfected) yakuza are in what can only be described as a state of consternation, reasoning not without logic that if everyone is a yakuza/vampire, there’ll be no one to extort protection money from.) Kagayama attentively visits the sickbed of a badly-injured girl, with whom he has fallen in love; at the same time, the former captain of his yakuza troop, a glamorous older woman, is tortured by a mysterious dripping noise inside her head. Some sort of beak-faced spirit with halitosis shows up in the knitting basement, while a couple more supernatural goons – one dressed like a 16th century clergyman (complete with ruff) and the other a psychotically violent martial artist – show up from time to time to launch random attacks on Kagayama.
No doubt to Miike fans this is another example of the delicious stew of genre hybrids he likes to dabble in, but I have to say I didn’t share the uproarious laughter that erupted occasionally around the auditorium. There were one or two mild giggles, to be sure, on the appearance of a much dreaded monster, the “world’s toughest terrorist”, who turns out to be a man in a zip-up frog suit, Honey Monster-style; the frog strikes action poses before beating the hell out of anything that gets in its way. Hilarious. Well, this mess of a film will have its fans, but I can’t say that it will make much headway outside the Miike hardcore. A very acquired taste.
