Dead or Alive

Wonderfully weird, frenetic and bizarre Japanese genre kaleidoscope shit sandwich of a film. Like riding a roller coaster practically guaranteed to make you vomit and give you whiplash, worth all the pain and foul tastes for experiencing the wild rides' beginning and insane finale at least once.

I'd normally rate this slightly lower, but the finale alone gives it a few points. An entertaining and interesting movie, but Miike has done better.

The parts where it obviously wasn't taking itself too seriously were very enjoyable, but the rest didn't impress me much.

Sufficiently shocking and violent.

One of Miike's shocker films. There are whole sections dedicated to allowing Miike to subject the audience to weird shit. It meanders quite a bit, but it has one of my favorite endings of all time. Better than Ichi the Killer.

A thoroughly average cop versus gangster movie with some really gross content and characters you won't care about. Might be worth viewing just for the final 2 minutes where everyone stops Giving Any Fucks which leads to the silliest ending I've seen in ages.

I disliked this for a lot of the reasons I disliked House of 1000 Corpses. Self-indulgent ridiculousness without much substance. I didn't care for any of the characters which left much of the film pretty boring. However, the violence was done well and damn, that ending was great. Worth it for the last ten minutes.

This movie ruined mini pools for me.

The first 5 and last 10 minutes were extraordinary, the rest was mediocre.

This is kind of a typical yakuza film with occasional Miike touches. Except for the amazing/hilarious ending, there's not much special about it.

Over the top Miike yakuza flick with some social undertones about half Japanese citizens. The beginning and the ending go extra hard.

Excellent action cinema with elements of drama. Fantastic, fast, colorful opening scenes that turns into a well-written, interesting yakuza-police story with some crazy scenes throughout the movie. I felt embarrassed and smiled gently at the end, which unfortunately did not work as I expected and changed my perception. I could have expected it (but I didn't want to).

The first five minutes are brilliant; a fantastic blur of kinetic energy and I love every single one of them. You can see the film try to branch out from that and tell multiple stories out of all of that, and it doesn't quite work. Despite the fact that everything seems great individually, it never comes together as a whole. It feels aimless, it feels muddled. It feels like wasted potential.

Fairly standard cops vs robbers crime drama sandwiched between 20 minutes of complete insanity.

Impressive opening and appealingly weird ending but total crap in the middle and confusing to boot, the usual platitudes about honor and manhood or whatever and some empty shock value.

A movie defined by its absolutely brilliant first six minutes, that then proceeds to do absolutely nothing with that energy but slowly let it leak away until you don't care about anything.

Ugly, convoluted film has schizophrenic tonal issues, on the one hand presenting a fairly simple, if dreary, cops and robbers saga, which intercuts juvenile, grotesque asides, which are graphically scatological and almost pornographic; this would be a defensible strategy if Miike and Ryu showed a shred of wit or a point of view in what it is they were trying to say, but all we get is a dull crime story with intrusions from a repulsive freak show. Blech!

Unlike most, for me, the out of left field ending was the ruination of what went before. "What went before" was an OK, by the numbers, gangster flick somewhat improved by some over the top scenes. Well filmed with excellent action. Score, but for the ending, would have been 65 with "better than average but not riveting" tag. If you are looking for a straight modern yakuza film 99% here will be right up your alley, the remaining 1% will either grab you as WTF brilliance or kill the whole thing.

Miike seems to enjoy reveling in the yakuza genre and taking the piss out of it at the same time.

and the point was?

You don't often see a movie with a complete WTF ending that misinterprets everything that has come before. The characters here are parasites fighting their insignificant battles, but the incongruent and nonsense ending elevates them to cosmic importance. An epic troll.

There is some great stuff in here, but the movie was too inconsistent.

hadouken ending is the best!

This movie and Possession would make a good shit-drowning double bill.

Didn't expect it to be such a dissapoinment especially after amazing opening scenes. Also great ending, but rest of the film is a mediocre at best yakuza drama with a few hints of Miikeness.

I dont know how to score this, it is definitely my favourite movie start and ending but the middle part is quite average and I dont remember it...

Fairly typical yakuza film, until it's saved from left field in the last ten minues

A quite unique cop story.

We all know Miike is a twisted genius, but Dead or Alive takes it to a new level. After the credits rolled, I sat in my seat for at least 5 or 10 minutes, unable to process what I had just seen. Absolutely incredible.

An orgy of violence and depravity all the things i like. For instance a girl being drowned in a kiddie pool of her own shit, and dogs being jacked off (rover didn't know he had it so good). This one let me down in the ending though, but overall a good movie

It's hard not to enjoy this on some level, with it's range from melodrama to hysterical and frenetic scenes, one more shocking and tasteless than the other. A rollercoaster ride of a film.

Um ótimo filme, depois de um começo frenético e empolgante, a estória se desenrola de forma eficaz e tudo nos leva a um duelo final entre o policial e o bandido, mas eis que Miike nos proporciona algo completamente inesperado. O que dizer do kamikaze da granada atirando-se dentro do carro em movimento? E o braço sendo arrancado? E a bazuca? Simplesmente Takashi Miike.

A movie that destroys all the clichés of the genre, therefore deserves to be seen.

"...undeniably stylish."

To be honest, this movie was OK at best. the beginning was neat and whatever but that was about it for me. The ending wasn't cool at all. And by the way, I got it. He put it in there "because, why not." I watched all of the interviews and whatever with Miike, and I really thought that he was making fun of the crowd to see what he could get away with by putting that stupid ending. There were some OK scenes, like the bank robbery deal, but nothing that makes me want to watch this again.

Very Great

Oh, HELL YEAH!!! That ending was orgasm-inducing, knock-you-on-your-ass AWESOME. So's the beginning for that matter. And the shootout with the guy in the bird costume. Oh, and the drowning of that girl in a pool filled with... yeah... this movie rules.

The opening is an insane and coked up montage of hilarious, over the top trash. However, the movie is mostly quiet and minimalist and just casually weird. Miike at least pretends to play it straight, but fuck that, during the awesome final showdown Miike lets everybody in on the joke and pulls the funniest and most ridiculous escalating sequence I've seen in any of his movies. If it's all a set up to that punchline, well, it's worth it.

This director makes an astonishing amount of junk, just about all of it qualifies as interesting and daring, only some of it is really inspired and rarely it's great. To me Dead or Alive is great junk, especially the conclusion.

Holy crap, what was that awesomeness I just watched? The whole first 10 minutes of this film is a breathless montage of insanity. The final duel is a cataclysmic thing of beauty.

Amazing opening, brilliant ending, and a not bad middle.

Best of the three.