Customer Reviews

Graveyard of Honor

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a remake of the original 1975 classic, and it doesnt disappoint. Unlike the original, it focuses more on Ishikawa's relationship with his heroine addicted girlfriend. Some of the scenes reminded me a bit of Yakuza Demon which Miike made a year later, so if you enjoyed that film, then you should like this one aswell, although this one seems a little more melancholic and definitley more violent. I know I shouldnt really compare this to the original as even Mr. Miike has said he had no intention of rivaling this remake with the original, but I would like to say I thought this version was better. I especially enjoyed how Miike remade the scene where Ishikawa barricades himself in his apartment and has a shootout with the cops. In Miike's version it's more of a comical scene, with Ishikawa firing wildly with a literally an entire arsenal of handguns in nothing but his boxer shorts, and finally running back inside and waving a white shirt while shouting "I give up! I ran out of bullets!"
I would highly recommend this film to any Miike or Yakuza film fan.

I wholeheartedly say that in this current Hollywood age of remaking prior movies--especially if they were actually well-aged masterpieces, THIS redo of Kinji Fukasaku's true crime biopic is given a more well-adapted, post-Bubble Economy update, leaving little to nothing behind when it comes to the gritty and unflinching character study of an actual gangster figure, whom never quite learned about the consequences of maturely controlling one's (perpetually) adolescent animal-like rage, which this Rikuo Ishikawa (renamed Ishimatsu) failed to abide or more importantly, understand--which explains the needlessly tragic outcome of drug addictions and alienating the very folks that could have been highly beneficial in the longer run... But then again, any fans of History Channel's Gangland will understand the predictable patterns to those who gush over the 'thug' lifestyle!

this is my top yakuza movie of all time. whats even better is that its based on a true story. see the life of the most violent charismatic yakuza that ever lived. if u can handle the gore and nonstop violence, u shuld add this to ur collection.

So this is a remake of a 1970's 'classic.' Perhaps this is why it is one of Miike's more intellectually interesting/challenging movies. This story is driven by compulsion: The compulsion of a sociopathic Yakuza 'Uncle' and the consequences of a two hour visit to the dentist by his godfather. While the director makes ironical use of this two hour gap to build his tale, in fact this film is a nonstop exposition of that tiny space occupying the distance between heaven and hell, or life and death, or self and other; traditional Japanese society and modern life, (washing dishes in the film's early scenes; when his future wife decides to 'sing karaoke,'with him; in the discussion about a near fatal gunshot, for instance, among many other examples including the entire movie between the opening shot and the final one). It is also an intensely interesting, almost astonishing, visual explication of the absurdist tendencies of the yakuza, read samurai, read traditional, code when taken to tragic extreme. So, while the film chronicles the unravelings of the life of a man, and the lives of the people surrounding him, it is also a story fraught with wider social commentary. For, as the protagonist's life explodes in a fit of narcisitic rage, it is rage directed at people who have plighted their troth to him in many different ways, from marriage to metaphorical brotherhood, to organizational loyalty and through obeisance to yakuza code. Because these interlocking relationships are both dialectical and fluid, or situational, we find that it requires that every thread in the fabric depends upon every other thread to maintain its position in the cloth, if you'll excuse the rather tortured metaphor. So when a part of this social fabric runs amok in a homicidal rampage and uses his relationships with the people in his network to both defend himself and to wreak more havoc on the system, a very wild and violent movie results.
Tragedy is tragedy only because it is the tale of innocence, or innocents as it were, unjustly violated. In this sense, this movie is a tragedy and it is also a morality play in the following way: A sociopath becomes a fully vested Lieutenant in a Yakuza army accumulating a series of mutual obligations and relationships along the way. When he goes round the twist these social ties are brought in to play often in mutually contradictory ways. So, the protagonist can commit murder against one Yakuza clan and seek protection from it by calling upon a kyodai, or brother, who is both obligated to him and to the offended clan, and therein lies the dilemma. Multiply transgressions by the dozen, stir in a maniac's paranoid delusions coupled with his sociopathic narcissism and one might say this is a volatile mix. The visuals in this movie are some of the best that Miike's done, and he does great visuals always, from the interesting camera angles and techniques, to the really great wardrobe selections made, to great touches such as shaping the protagonist's eyebrows to emulate the look of a traditional demon. One complaint I do have is that Miike did get a little carried away with the interesting camera angle scenes and let them drag on just a bit. With editing he could have cut out a few minutes from the film without losing a thing and perhaps even adding to the enjoyment factor. A really great thing about the movie is the subtext concerning the Yakuza's role as the upholder of traditional values, meanwhile it is composed of the worst kind of rotter commiting the most most vile criminal acts. I know this review is a bit of a mess but this movie has so many different undercurrents that it is difficult to lay them all out in a cogent and coherent manner. I especially recommend this to anyone with a top notch Liberal Arts degree because it is as pithy as a novel and will be sure to take one back to his undergraduate days and the study of, say, Claude Levi-Strauss, for instance.