Gozu Review

Having since finished 2015’s “Yakuza 0” I’ve been craving an experience akin to what I played, a hardboiled crime drama about greed, corruption, and the brotherhood that is built within the lifestyle of a Yakuza, but in film format. The Yakuza crime genre is vast and almost never-ending, but the rabbit hole of the genre had me return to famed Japanese director Takashi Miike. Miike is a director that I’ve since been familiar with since my exposer to his work by way of his 1999 film “Audition” and his 2017 film adaptation of “Blade of the Immortal,” but I thought his 2003 film “Gozu” would be more in line with what I was looking for that retained what the “Yakuza” game experience was (I think I was sorely wrong). However, after finishing the film it was an experience totally different than what I was looking for and what I expected from a typical Yakuza film, but then again Takashi Miike is no typical film director.  

“Gozu” aka “Yakuza Horror Theatre: Cow’s Head” has a simple beginning, a typical meeting with the head of the Azamawari crime family, a man simple known as “Boss,” the members of the gang are all dressed in black stylish suits and puffing huge clouds of smoke, making them more chimney than men. The formalities take a turn towards the bizarre as a member of the clan, Ozaki, kills a chihuahua that he mistakenly thinks is a Yakuza attack dog sent to assassinate the head of the family. Seeing that Ozaki is mentally unstable Boss orders a fledgling Yakuza, Minami, to kill and dispose of Ozaki before he becomes a liability later down the line. The film then takes a brief turn from Yakuza procedural to road trip movie as we see Minami and Ozaki make their way to a depot where Ozaki’s body is to be disposed of. A line in the beginning of the film perfectly solidifies why this act must happen when Boss utters “a Yakuza that can’t do his job properly is better off dead,” showing a glimpse into the do or die nature of Japan’s crime syndicate. 

Minami is tasked with escorting his sworn brother, a relationship forged through actions not blood, to his own assassination. The fledgling member is the metaphorical ferryman on a bizarre journey down the River Styx. In another moment of hysteria Ozaki mistakes a civilian’s car as a model specifically made to kill Yakuza, in the struggle to disarm the crazed man Minami accidentally kills his sworn brother when he tackles him to the ground. While “Gozu” is part of the Yakuza crime genre it is not held down by the genre constraints and the need to be overly serious, as the plot picks up when Minami loses Ozaki’s body after having a very bizarre encounter in a coffee shop. 

Bizarre is a word that is frequently used when talking about Miike’s early body of work because the director doesn’t feel the need to stay within genres and will fill each of his films with David Lynch levels of odd characters and settings while inputting his own level of grizzle visuals that act as his directorial stamps. A perfect example of the Lynchian ties are the townspeople Minami encounters while looking for his brother’s body. Each encounter with the old men in the coffee shop, echoing incoherent nonsense about the weather, and the hotel owner that is obsessed with milk, her own of course, and her brother that is said to be able to channel spirits screams Lynch because no other filmmaker rivals him in the business of making bizarre films make sense.  

While “Gozu” was not what I expected when looking into films that would fill the “Yakuza 0” sized hole Miike did do the film adaptation of the first game in the franchise back in 2007, so that’s always an option. “Gozu” like “Audition” before it is a slow burn that hypnotizes the audience and rewards those that stick with its oddities with a worthwhile plot twist the signals the film’s third act and a finale that still has me wrapping my head around what I’ve just witnessed.