4 out of 5

Director: Takashi Miike

I sometimes forget why I own so many Miike movies.  They aren’t the type of films that you need to frequently rewatch, and even his best can be daunting to sit through at times.  But when I do get around to it, the magic hits again.  He’s a rarity in the film world, a director who’s amazing breadth of work hasn’t just grown in quality over time, but also proves enriching to go back to see how themes and styles feed on themselves, making even the most dreadful of work-for-hire Miike (Silver?) have some level of relevance.  DOA 2 is the oddest of the DOA trilogy.  Working from the same misleadingly contemplative template as his ‘Bird People’ scripter Masa Nakamura provided for that film, Miike further subverts our revenge flick expectations (DOA 1 was madness that dipped into plodding depression, then spun back up into cartoon ridiculousness) by having an initial gang hit – for which Show Aikawa is conracted – go wrong when Riki Takeuchi shows up to shoot the target… and then the film becomes an exploration of childhood.  Show and Riki grew up together.  Can these two bad men re-find the joys of youth?  There are the typically puzzling Miike images, the typically playful scatalogical jokes, and then the tons of randomness that can either be ignored or studied.  But what I liked about DOA2 is that it’s a consistent slow-burn – it’s off-kilter from the start, and earns our interest (and further solidifies Miike’s rep as an auteur) by sticking to its guns, resulting in something impressively emotional.  For this reason, the diversion late in the film where our hitmen return to their task feels tonally off, reveling in the violence again, albeit momentarily.  While this is a valid juxtaposition to the excellent denouncement that follows, it’s not quite the breathless sweep of highs and lows the film up to that point offers, and that juxtaposition was more properly achieved in a gorgeous composed sequence just prior, which pits cutaways to gang violence against peaceful village life.

Those in search of more DOA might be better off skipping to 3 (which is more bizarre than but not as humble as 2), but Miike followers will find this an incredibly rich film, surprisingly more focused than some of the director’s other work, and a necessary step in the evolution of the DOA themes.