I'd be hard pressed to cite a more achingly boring and pretentious movie that this one, and for the life of me, I fail to see how or why Miike Takashi seems to have garnered such a cult reputation in some quarters. Full of ponderous longeurs which no doubt are meant to register as pregnant with meaning; characters that are maudlin when they are not just plain wooden, and the constant use of `symbolism' that is about as subtle as a sledge-hammer blow to the head, it is one of those films that has you asking yourself `when will it ever end?'.
No doubt the `heroes' in these films are the macho role-models that armchair nerds wish they had become, which perhaps gives a clue as to why these films seem to appeal to the `intelligentsia', but suffice to say when these guys aren't setting their faces into masks of grimness or wallowing in self-pitying nostalgia, they just strut around wearing shades, and walking as if they have pin cushions in their underpants.
Mercifully, apart from a very brief glimpse of necrophilia, this film is, in the main, bereft of the cruelty and calculated shock values of Takashi's other movies, so hopefully he has by now perhaps exhausted this apparent obsession with continually upping the stakes and `going further than any film-maker before has dared to go', although advance reports of his latest film would perhaps suggest otherwise.
Overall, this film has all the intense, eager, over-earnestness, (and yes, calculated `naughtiness'), of something made on a Boy Scouts' camp as part of a vocational work project. Witless, charmless and pretentious nonsense, masquerading as quality, heavy-weight, head stuff.
No doubt the `heroes' in these films are the macho role-models that armchair nerds wish they had become, which perhaps gives a clue as to why these films seem to appeal to the `intelligentsia', but suffice to say when these guys aren't setting their faces into masks of grimness or wallowing in self-pitying nostalgia, they just strut around wearing shades, and walking as if they have pin cushions in their underpants.
Mercifully, apart from a very brief glimpse of necrophilia, this film is, in the main, bereft of the cruelty and calculated shock values of Takashi's other movies, so hopefully he has by now perhaps exhausted this apparent obsession with continually upping the stakes and `going further than any film-maker before has dared to go', although advance reports of his latest film would perhaps suggest otherwise.
Overall, this film has all the intense, eager, over-earnestness, (and yes, calculated `naughtiness'), of something made on a Boy Scouts' camp as part of a vocational work project. Witless, charmless and pretentious nonsense, masquerading as quality, heavy-weight, head stuff.