AGITATOR was the last Takashi Miike film to be released in 2001. When you consider that in that same year he was also responsible for, amongst other things, VISITOR Q, THE GUYS FROM PARADISE, ICHI THE KILLER, DOA: FINAL and THE HAPPINESS OF THE KATAKURIS then I think it’s fair to say that 2001 was a pretty good year for Miike, and one to rival 1999. AGITATOR sees Miike return to his roots with a full-blown yakuza film, minus most of the insanity that has come to be associated with his crazed gangster flicks.

The film concerns the tensions and power struggles brought to the surface when two rival yakuza families, the Shirane and the Yokomizo groups, are brought into conflict by chance. A Shirane birthday party on Yokomizo territory gets out of hand when a yakuza (fittingly played by Miike himself) starts abusing the girls at a club. Yokomizo yakuza show up and stab Miike fatally, kicking off a turf war that will eventually spiral out of control. Also involved are the controlling Tenseikai family who want to absorb the Shirane and Yokomizo groups into their group. Throw into this mix an unruly Yokomizo boss called Higuchi, the assassination of the bosses of both the Shirane and the Yokomizo and you have a complex, intriguing meditation on the yakuza way of life.

The film’s many twists and turns (the screenplay was written by Shigenori Takechi, who also provided the screenplay for Miike’s excellent GRAVEYARD OF HONOR remake), plus the sheer number of yakuza henchmen and families involved, may be enough to put many casual viewers off the film. Miike has never been too concerned with linear narratives, but many viewers didn’t mind this in earlier films like DOA and ICHI THE KILLER, as there were plenty of insane set-pieces to enjoy which more than compensated for some head scratching in between. Miike dispenses with all this for AGITATOR, and though there is a fair amount of graphic violence in the film, it’s still tame compared to that found in most of his other major works. The final problem with the film is its length – at exactly two and a half hours, it’s a fairly long haul, and it’s certainly a long time to keep focussed on the convoluted plot. In all truth, it’s hard to defend the film’s runtime – there is a lot of padding, especially around the mid-section of the film, and it’s hard to see why Miike didn’t cut it down to a more manageable two hours (the only other Miike film I’ve seen that seemed overlong to me was THE GUYS FROM PARADISE, which also dragged in the middle).

All this said though, the film has many positive points in its favour. The photography is excellent, ranging from studied long takes to frantic hand-held chases, and manages to capture the mean streets of Japan very effectively indeed. Miike’s cameo is amusing and won’t do anything to dispel allegations of misogyny against him (he drunkenly kicks a girl around then rams a microphone into another girl’s private parts) and it’s interesting in that he chose to play the character whose misbehaviour and death effectively kicks off the whole gang war. There are some quirky scenes such as when one of the gangs receives a call telling them that their boss has been stabbed. They rush to get there and arrive only to find the boss perfectly healthy. It turns out to have been the yakuza equivalent of a fire drill, and he’s not impressed that it took 18m36s for his men to get to him. Another example is the forced recruitment of a noodle delivery boy into the Higuchi gang when one of their members has fled to be with his pregnant girlfriend; he’s forced to drink alcohol until he passes out, then gets tattooed. As usual with a Miike film, the ending is also excellent and unexpected, and the cast contains some great actors (the always reliable Naoto Takenaka, Renji Ishibashi and Miike favourite Mickey Curtis). Plus, frequent Miike collaborator Koji Endo provides another very pleasant score.

Still, overall I would have to classify it as a bit of a missed opportunity. It’s by no means a bad film, but by Miike’s standards it’s just not one of his more captivating movies and belongs to the second tier of his films, along with works such as BLUES HARP, GUYS FROM PARADISE and SALARYMAN KINTARO.

Cast:

Masaya Kato
Naoto Takenaka
Ryosuke Miki
Masato Eve
Taisaku Akino
Mickey Curtis
Renji Ishibashi
Kenichi Endo
Akiko Kana
Hakuryu
Hitoshi Ozawa
Aya Kawamura
Hiroki Matsukata

Crew:

Director – Takashi Miike
Screenplay – Shigenori Takechi
Executive Producer – Yoshihiro Masuda
Producers – Fujio Matsushima and Seiichiro Ishii
Director of Photography – Kiyoshi Ito
Production Design – Tatsuo Ozeki and Masaru Hashimoto
Editing – Yasushi Shimamura
Music – Koji Endo