“DEAD OR ALIVE centers around Ryuichi and his gang of dropouts, descendants of “Zanryu Koji” or Japanese war orphans left in China after the war who returned to Japan only to find themselves second class citizens. Because of his lineage Ryuichi feels a detachment from society and therefore not bound by the same rules that govern everyone else. He also carries no loyalty to either side of the underworld in which he operates and decides to take on both the Japanese Yakuza and Chinese triad, who ironically are in the process of forming a partnership, and take over the drug trafficking operation that ships in from Taiwan.”

This makes one believe that the film is a moody, violent mobster drama. And it undoubtedly would have been, if the filmmakers hadn't dropped several hits of acid, trepanned themselves, and stepped into a reality far, far away from the everyday world we tend to live in.

In one sense we do indeed follow the steps of Ryuichi and his gang. But we must also take into account a hard-nosed cop, who is on a collision course with the gangster, who is dealing with marital problems, a teenage daughter in dire need of a very expensive surgery, and an apathetic police force that doesn't take crime fighting quite as seriously as he does.

These elements hold a lot of promise, and by themselves could easily lead to something original, interesting, and intense. And, everything listed here is indeed played out wonderfully, with all the actors – both good guys and bad guys – making us feel their schism with society.

But how to explain the many “cracks” that appear in this edifice? Cracks? Let me change that to chasms. We watch a man frenetically gobbling noodles in some sort of feeding frenzy, only to see him shot in the back, blowing the still undigested noodles from his gut to the floor. We see bizarre, almost surrealistic instances of nude dance. We see a clown throwing darts at a scantily clad man bound to a spinning wheel while an odd-looking hand puppet gropes the victim's genitals. We see a dog being chased and caught in an apartment, masturbated, and then placed behind a nude woman writhing on the floor so bestiality pictures can be shot and sold for, I would think, a tidy profit. We see a woman stepped on and drowned in a pool of her own excrement. We see a cop getting his hand egged, floured, and deep-fried.

These are just a few of the wonders that weave themselves into the tapestry of the cop vs. yakuza storyline. My favorite, though, is the facedown finale between the cop and criminal. The cop has a knife in his stomach, his left arm is hanging by a thread. He grabs it with his right hand and, in a cinematic moment of unparalleled machismo, rips the arm clean off (blood shooting out in a geyser). The scene is classic: the cop with his detached left arm held by his right hand while the yakuza looks on in wonder. When both men take guns out and shoot each other in the abdomen a dozen or so times, it's not surprising that they both collapse to a knee. And though a part of us expects them to expire then and there, we know who the director is and thus wait for the money shot. Sure enough, the dying cop pulls a bazooka from his back and takes aim, while the dying criminal drags a ball of pulsating light from his chest. The ball is thrown, the bazooka goes off, and we watch all of Japan (or was it the world?) consumed in the cataclysmic collision.

In my review of the amazing AUDITION, I promised to see more of Miike's work. Sure enough, he has shocked me again, impressed me with his genius (Who else could take so many insane elements and blend them together into something artistic, disturbing, and – believe it or not – logical?), and left me numbed in awe.

This stylized movie is a look into the gutters of our minds. It's raw, sometimes funny, original, curious, honest, and light-years away from the paint by numbers Hollywood formulas that we've grown so familiar  (and disgusted) with. DEAD OR ALIVE is an absolutely brilliant piece of work.