Yakuza Demon is probably Takashi Miike most normal movie ever made. No sudden, bizarre $#!+. No necrophilia. No butt sex. Just a normal everyday Yakuza movie. Wowsers! So is it good? Yup. Riki was awesome as usual, the action was bloody and fun and the story was well told but not really anything special. I liked Yakuza Demon but it is far from Miike's best because it doesn't have his signature weird ass crap so blow me.

Miike's biggest genre flavoring is the Yakuza, usually approaching them from a surrealist or nihilist perspective (and, indeed, mostly both). This one goes the nihilist route but is a lot more loving and emotional. In the end, the trials of hyper-violent people results in nothing but destruction, but this time a strong sense of family is created.And family is what it's all about, in a much more direct and simple narrative way than the shock value of Visitor Q. The two "brothers" and their "boss" are immediately shown as an integral and caring nuclear family, complete with sunsets and Gothic music. The boss's wife at first seems distant from this nucleus, but as things develop she becomes more and more integral until she in fact becomes the cause with which motivates the drama. In terms of narrative film-making, this is definitely an example of Miike being able to make a straight-forward dramatic story with emotional emphasis beyond shock and sensation.There is also some interesting choices in the approach to violence, which is different from most of his other movies. Violence here is as expressionistic as always, but video effects and purposefully uneven audio distances the viewer from it and causes a very real cognitive dissonance--something he obviously did very purposefully and very well. It's amazing how one person can go and find so many different ways of portraying similar themes, changing them to fit the mood and tone of the movie. Yakuza Demon features some real masterful directing.One warning, though. For those of you, like me, who dislike chewing noises and the sounds of people eating (think the scene from Lord of the Rings), this movie can be a real exercise in patience. It's not just a minor nitpick as actually scenes of eating and talking at the same time fill up a good third of the playlength. Again I think this is purposeful and again I'm pretty sure it has to do with theme--a group of people subsistence surviving and trading money and fighting, with very little reason or power behind it and only a single unit that actually loves.--PolarisDiB

Those who criticize this as a minor Miike films are missing the point of this film. This film should not be compared to the DEAD OR ALIVE films, ICHI THE KILLER or FUDOH or any of the hyper manga-style Miike film. Instead, KIKOKU draws from Miike's grittier, melancholic, more classic crime dramas like RAINY DOG, LEY LINES and BLUES HARP. In my opinion, Miike does this kind of film as well or better than the ones he best known for. These films are the ones that put Miike in the league with Kinji Fukasaku and possibly above Beat Takeshi -- and not really the manga ones.I like this kind of film because it is so pure -- so classic in its crime fatalism -- like a great American noir of the late 40s or 50s or a great French gangster flick from the 30s. Like the other films mentioned above, at the heart of this film is an unlikely love story which makes up the eye of the deadly hurricane that is Miike's take on the violent Yakuza underworld. On the surface the plot is very similar to DEADLY OUTLAW REKKA, but while DOR is fast and fun, KIKOKU is the doomed, tragic version of that film. It's a more serious film that should be taken seriously as one of Miike's best -- and one of Riki Takeuchi's best as well.

This movie is a story of a small Yakuza gang who's boss finds himself in trouble after a money dispute with the other bosses in his crime family. After a rival family declares war on them, the boss soon finds himself in jail and under scrutiny. His two remaining underlings decide to advance their fledgling group in the family by destroying the rival society themselves, thus endangering their own outnumbered organization and alienating themselves from it.This was kind of an average gangster movie from Miike. There's nothing wrong with it, but there's nothing special about it either. It's very similar in feel to "Graveyard of Honor", but without the big message or depressive feel. For straight-to-video, it looks great. The blood and violence is not off-the-charts, but it is there. There are no big shocker parts or bizarre concepts like you might expect from this director.Look for a surprise alternate ending after the credits.