4 out of 5

Directed by: Takashi Miike

A purposeful muddle of ideas; a fascinatingly formative work for Miike.  Shinjuku Triad Society is still a standout, 20+ years after the fact.  The directorial auteur’s notoriety is well earned, and supporting the fascination some of us have with repeated viewings of his catalogue, seeing the ebb and flow of his themes at different stages has a different effect depending on what the last few Miike projects you viewed may have been.  When I first watched Shinjuku, it was early in my Takashi career, and I remember seeing it as a haphazard, loud, angry excursion.  Now, watched in a bundle with the Arrow rereleases of Dead or Alive and the other Black Society films, it’s an impressively strong-willed flick, and subversive as ever, but also delightfully (if I dare use that descriptor…) subtle in those particular Miike ways.

It’s tempting to point out the techniques that would serve Takashi well in later films, particularly the first DOA: the flash-cut, violence-and-sex-splashed opener, in which a headless body is discovered, back alley blowjobs are given, and throats are slashed and spray copious blood is a preview of that flick’s opening; the film’s bland-eyed buggery focus swirls the same dirty pool as… y’know, another dirty pool.  But more broadly, we see Takashi’s obsession with fractured families – brothers on two sides of the law and a gang war – fractured ethnicities, with said brothers being displaced Chinese and our gang war between yakuza and triads, and the grays of morality.  The last is Shinjuku’s most impactful sensibility: Kippei Shiina as cop Kiriya is as evil and indulgent as any other, but has his definition of righting wrongs in hunting down Tomorowo Taguchi’s Wang and convincing his yakuza lawyer brother to head back home to their ill father.  The film’s inability to redeem Kiriya is palpable; he’s never seen as good, even from the film’s start when he viciously assaults a witness.  His questionable pursuit – which, again, is muddled, and kept somewhat vague as to cause – is vicious, but then touched with occasional, odd sentimentality as he remembers his upbringing.  Everything in the film follows this logic, including the odd role of sex – which is almost exclusively homosexual, save a rape sequence that earns Kiriya a follower, as he makes the victim orgasm for the first time without the use of drugs… – and the understanding that there’s not a single person, cop or burglar, who isn’t out for themselves in some fashion.  Except, perhaps, Wang, of unquenchable thirst – always carrying a bottle of water – and a frightening reflection of Kiriya in that both seem to function in their roles on autopilot.

And yet: this is still early Miike, which means it doesn’t always feel fully committed.  Dead or Alive’s application of the above techniques hits your gut, and the evil-deeds-done-with-passion would be refigured for Miike several times, though, for me, most effectively in his Graveyard of Honor; my point here being that, while Miike certainly produced gold and not gold in the subsequent years, his confidence in his approach became consistent: whatever the project, it would come across as generally into whatever it was trying to do, even if that was trying to be, like, quick and crappy.  Shinjuku’s moral mire affects the film’s impact, never fully realizing its own insanity.  Moments definitely get there: Kiriya and Wang’s bloody tussle; the tossed-off final lines.  And perhaps the Black Society Trilogy as a whole, added up, completes the bigger picture that would equal that commitment.

However you want to view it, it’s a grabbing flick, and occasionally a devastating one, whether in a Miike context or as a one-off experience.