IZO

Takashi Miike is in rare form, whatever that means. I liked the story, although it was a little sprawling (but it's an epic, what are you going to do). I liked how casually the movie switched back and forth between settings. I feel, though, that Miike has both an incredible sense of subtlety, and no subtlety at all. There seems to be philosophy here besides the stuff that is stated directly by characters in a setting created so they could state these things. However, it gets lost. Too subtle? The same cannot be said of his characteristic violence. I wish he could learn to use metaphor to replace shooting someone in the eye with arrows. Beat Takashi is hot, though.

Recommendations:
anything else by Miike