Gokudô kyôfu dai-gekijô: Gozu / Gozu (2003) - A weird experimental homage to gangster movies and surreal twisted films - 9/10 (12/08/11)

This weird experimental Japanese movie is not only a homage to the gangster movies of the last three decades but also a tribute to the surreal cinema. The movie has many original characters, scenes and quotes to become a unique cult movie.

The story itself explains already quite well the experimental style of the movie and its weird uniqueness. A young Yakuza is torn in between his crazy friend and partner who once saved his life and who now wants to rebel against the inner structures of the Yakuza on one side and the boss of his gang that wants him to kill his old partner gone crazy on the other side. When the young Yakuza is on his way with his partner to finally kill him in an isolated place, his betrayed partner suddenly disappears without a trace when the young and naive Yakuza leaves him alone for a few moments to order some lunch in a strange restaurant. He has to go on a strange journey to find his friend - either to ultimately kill him and satisfy his severe and pervert boss or to ally with him and try to break free. On his way, he meets weird transvestites in a restaurant, a pervert female hotel manager, a weird man with a scarface that seems to know more than he pretends, a strange young woman that pretends to be the reincarnation of the disappeared Yakuza partner and a mysterious cow demon that seems to reign over the suburbs of a city where the madness reigns.

The film impresses with strange, unreal and yet unique and touching characters, a couple of truly bizarre events and an unexpected conclusion that you won't soon forget and that may rather develop further questions instead of answering the essential ones. I watched many scenes of the movie several times and tried to understand and analyze and developed my own theory. The great thing is that many plausible solutions can be found as I read on the internet which is a fact that distinguishes this Japanese masterpiece from many other movies of this kind that don't want the viewers to understand, offer unnecessary side stories and try to distract the viewers from reality to mix them up and make the movie an unreachable diva. This movie here is strange but addicting, attracting and relatively easy to follow. It unites detailed complexity and relative simplicity in a perfect way. It has also rather fast development for an Asian movie of that kind and gets you quickly into the complex story.

I think that the movie is more interesting for fans of surreal and twisted film experiments but it's one of the more accessible or commercial movies of this kind and could be a great introduction to someone that would like to get a good idea of that genre. In fact, I would recommend this movie to anybody that likes epic and surprising road movies. Anybody that expects another entertaining gangster movie from Takashi Miike may be surprised by this unusual style and should check a trailer out before purchasing this movie. There is not a lot of action and tension in the movie but a lot of dark humour, mystery, mild horror as well as sex and violence as the film progresses.