Shinjuku Triad Society

Turf wars, rent boys, and so-bad-its-good club music abound in the first of Miike’s ultra-violent, serpentinely-plotted “Black Society Trilogy,” and the first film the director made specifically for cinema release in Japan, as opposed to his direct-to-VHS “V-cinema” titles. Tatsuhito Kiriya (Kippei Shiina, from Takeshi Kitano’s Outrage), a half-Chinese, half-Japanese policeman in Tokyo’s hard-boiled Kabuki-cho red light district, attempts to track down and arrest Wang, a vicious and lethal, gay Taiwanese Triad leader (played by Miike regular and original Tetsuo the Iron Man Tomorow Taguchi). To alleviate the heat from running a prostitution ring, baiting the yakuza, and evading the police, Wang hires a lawyer––Tatsuhito’s little brother. Unblinkingly documenting real-life brutality and ethnic tensions, it’s essential viewing for Miike completists and a gritty, hard-edged thriller, much of it shot guerrilla-style on location in the back alleys of Shinjuku. DVD OUT OF PRINT!