What would happen if the ruthless underground of the Yakuza got
mixed up with vampires, well In Takashi Miike's latest movie Yakuza Apocalypse
we get to see this unusual pairing that you wouldn’t normally associate with
each other. The movie is based around the world of the Yakuza, ran by
the supposedly unassailable boss Kamiura who is actually also a vampire! One of
Kamiura's men named Kageyama is one of his most trusted underlings but constanly
ridiculed for not being able to get a tattoo due to his sensitive skin. Kamiura
is then aproached by an assassin from overseas telling him he must report back
to a syndicate he left years before or die, Kamiura refuses and has to fight a
long and arduous battle against a martial-arts expert named Kyoken who subsequently
defeats him and proceeds to tear his body limb from limb.
Kageyama finds his dying boss and is then bitten by him, passing
on all his abilities and power's over to Kageyama. During Kageyama's search for
vengeance upon his deceased boss he slowly awakens his vampiric power's he
struggles to control himself but receives advice on how to try and control
them. He then goes after Kaeru-kun, the foreign syndicate's unknown
and immovable leader, which leads into an immense battle.
The first time I watched this I'm not going to lie I
was scratching my head so much that it was nearly bleeding, trying to
process what was going on from one scene only to be more confused and
dazed by what was happening on the next, it completely caught me of guard and
to be honest the next few viewings I still struggled to get what was going on. So I thought I best have a quick look over Takashi Miike's filmography, movies like 13 Assassin's {2010}, Audition {1999} and Ichi the
Killer {2001}, that still didn't help me figure anything out about this film or
director, so I looked into other people's opinions of his work and how it’s all
very similar, trying to maintain a bizarre or ambiguous ending
whilst also maintaining a very provocative movie based on extreme violence and
sexual taboos, which to be honest I could see a lot of during
Yakuza Apocalypse. Once you stop trying to figure out this movie and mentally
process what's actually happening and enjoy it for what it is, an over the top
action movie, you start to enjoy it and laugh at the insanity of it all, I
mean, c’mon, the leader of the foreign syndicate is a man in a frog costume
with epic martial art skills, W, T and F. I would recommend watching it for the insanity
and martial art crazy frog man, well the first few times anyway, I liked it
even though I didn't really get what was going on, and when I just stopped
thinking about what was actually happening I loved it because just how much it
made me laugh with how crazy it was getting, but if you are the type of person
that needs an informative back story as to why, what and how this has
all happened and don't like movie's that just karate chop you in the face with
a frog flipper then I would say give it a miss as you won't like how this
movie progresses.