Graveyard of Honour

Miike Takashi tries to make a Japanese version of The Godfather and, well, fails. I like Miike’s work, really I do, and there were moments of brilliance in this film, but someone should have come through and give it a bit of an edit. It’s at least an hour too long. Making a long film does not automatically make it an epic.

Making it to the end of is an ordeal. It’s difficult, painful, and not even rewarding – we saw how it ends at the beginning. Our “hero”, if we can call him that, must be one of the stupidest Yakuza – he keeps killing the wrong people for the wrong reasons. There was nothing to like about him, and quite a bit to dislike. About an hour before it finally stopped, I was muttering under my breath for him to “hurry up and get caught so we can all leave”.

I was bored.

As part of this guy’s downfall, he gets addicted to heroin. But he runs out of money! Yay! Now the movie can end! He finds more money. Okay. More heroin. More shots of him and his girlfriend shooting up and acting stupid. Then there’s no more money so the movie can end! Oh. They found more money. And bought more H. Fantastic. So they shoot up, get high, act stupid. Repeat. Repeat. How much of this does Miike expect us all to take of this? I nearly walked out. And I don’t walk out of films.