Review for Yakuza Apocalypse

Introduction

Takashi Miike is a prolific and eclectic director. There’s a little of everything on his filmography, from the critically acclaimed films like Audition and Lesson of Evil, to the anime and manga adaptations like Crows Zero, Yatterman, and Ace Attorney, to the experimental, out-there stuff like The Happiness of the Katakuris and For Love’s Sake. In amongst all this, there’s a whole lot of exploitation violence, and there’s plenty of cross-genre fertilisation too. Yakuza Apocalypse is one of those cheesy exploitation flicks that is best watched after a couple of lagers and an artery clogging kebab. These films hardly go down as landmarks in cinema history, but depending on how well they are made, they get watched more often than the landmarks in cinema history. Yakuza Apocalypse mixes up the eponymous Japanese gangster genre with a whole lot of wacky supernatural stuff, and the results are interesting to say the least.


Kageyama always wanted to be a yakuza, especially given the example of the boss Kamiura, the kind of man who shows no mercy to his enemies, but who devotedly protects the local shopping arcade and its denizens. Kageyama has worked his way up to becoming the boss’s right hand man, he’s mean, he’s tough, and he takes crap from no-one, and he has really sensitive skin, so he can’t get the requisite yakuza tattoo on his back. It quickly becomes obvious that the boss is lining Kageyama up to be his successor, even going as far as inviting him to the bar he frequents, where no other gang member has been invited.


Kageyama only realises what being Kamiura’s successor really means when the syndicate that Kamiura had left show up to demand his return. When Kamiura refuses, they kill him, although it turns out that Kamiura really is hard to kill. In his dying breath, his disembodied head bites Kageyama, and tells him to drink his blood. Now Kageyama’s a yakuza vampire as well, and he hasn’t the time to get used to his new abilities, for the Syndicate boss, Kaeru is coming, and he’s peeved.

The Disc

Yakuza Apocalypse gets a 2.40:1 widescreen 1080p transfer on this Blu-ray and it’s a great transfer for a film that is recently, and digitally shot. The image is clear and sharp throughout, the detail levels are excellent, colours are strong and consistent (the film has a distinct yellow tint graded into it to give it the requisite mood), and there are no problems such as compression or digital banding that I noticed. You have the choice between DTS-HD MA 5.1 Surround and PCM 2.0 Stereo Japanese, with subtitles unfortunately burnt into the print. The surround is excellent, meaty when it comes to the action, and robust when it comes to the sound design. The subtitles could have used a little proof-reading, as some of the translations didn’t make sense. Looking at a letter written in invisible ink, Kageyama is advised to ‘burn it’, when ‘heat it’ might have been more appropriate. The disc presents the film with an animated menu, and the sole extra is the theatrical trailer.

The images in this review were kindly supplied by Manga Entertainment.

Conclusion

Yakuza Apocalypse is very much a movie for the post-pub crowd, the kind of movie that is fun to watch sober, but even better to watch with a bunch of mates, having downed just enough to take the edge off, on a Friday night. It’s the sort of cheesy, over-the-top, violent action movie that Hollywood refuses to make these days, although in the VHS age it was Hollywood’s bread and butter, and we need to be grateful that directors like Takeshi Miike can still fill the need that film fans have for action exploitation. It doesn’t hurt that the production values and cast performances are more A-list than C, and Yakuza Apocalypse really has some awesome martial arts sequences to it.


The plot is utterly daft, and doesn’t really bear thinking about. The yakuza lieutenant going on a crusade for vengeance after his boss is brutally murdered by another gang, betrayed by loyal people in his own, is hardly new, but this film mixes in a whole lot of supernatural elements, and plays it for laughs in a way that invigorates the story. A brutal action sequence, where the boss goes up against another gang single-handedly, braving blades and bullets to prevail, offers a glimpse of what is to come, but the first act of the film really plays like a relatively straight gangster movie, introducing the characters and the turf they inhabit, getting some idea of the Yakuza sense of honour and how it pertains to Kageyama and the others.


And then the English speaking preacher toting a mini-coffin on his back, alongside the Thai tourist show up, looking for Kamiura, and they’re not looking for directions. Kageyama barely survives that, but a bite on his neck has changed him, he’s become a Yakuza vampire, and he has a lot of trouble getting used to it. Unlike his late boss, he can’t get out of the habit of drinking blood, and everyone he bites also turns into a yakuza. It’s here the comedy really takes over, as we see previously unassuming people like school-girls, teachers, nurses, and housewives, all suddenly gaining a yakuza attitude to life, and adopting the same crudity of language. The comedy isn’t just confined to this aspect; Denden’s citizenship classes are utterly surreal.


Things really go off the deep end when the rest of the enemy syndicate show up, looking to finish off what they started with Kamiura, and seeing that Kageyama now has the yakuza vampire powers, he becomes a target. Alongside the preacher and the tourist, there comes an honest to god kappa sprite, and then the evil leader shows up, a kung-fu kicking man in a frog suit (a fluffy mascot frog suit, not an underwater diving frogsuit). The film goes completely bonkers towards the end, and it’s all the more fun for it. It also leaves on a cliff-hanger, but it’s less the promise of a sequel than it is a cheeky wink to the camera.


Yakuza Apocalypse is as utterly disposable, but as utterly fun as I expected it to be. It’s not perfect though. One weakness is that the spread of the yakuza vampire ‘virus’ and the fight against the syndicate are treated like two separate plotlines in the same movie, where intertwining them and getting the stories to work as one would have been more rewarding. But this film fits in with movies like Yakuza Weapon, Deadball, and Bring Me the Head of Machinegun Woman for over-the-top, daft action.