Stars: Sho Aikawa, Noriko Aota, Edison Chen

Director: Takashi Miike

Summary: Otamoko flees the city with the Japanese Yakuza and the Chinese Triads on his heels after he takes payment for a assassination that he failed to complete...

When the assassin Otamoko is hired to make a hit, he is shocked when a rival hitman gets there before him but chooses to take the money anyway and flee from the gangsters who control his life. Returning to the island of his childhood he discovers that the rival hitman was his friend Sawada and the two hatch a plan to team up and rid the world of the gangsters and drug dealers which leads to a frenetic climax of action and violence.

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An off-the-cuff Japanese gangster movie with an absurdist streak that shades into surrealism, Dead or Alive 2isn't thrown by its brief to sequelise a film that ended not only with the deaths of its lead characters but the destruction of Japan. Takashi Miike--the prolific auteur whose best-known film is the atypically considered Audition--brings back his lead actors in different roles and spins off another strange shaggy dog tale. The film starts out with a Yakuza vs Triads gang war in the offing, then sidesteps into "'Beat"' Miike territory as a couple of hit-men who meet when they turn up for the same assassination turn out to be childhood friends and enjoy a nostalgic wallow as they return to the orphanage where they met, re-encounter other old pals and even stand in for some injured actors putting on a play for the children.

White-suited and terminally ill Sawada (Riki Takeuchi) and bleached blond and Hawaiian-shirted Otamoko (Sho Aikawa) get back to gunplay, committing contract murders and funnelling the profits into third world charities, which earns them occasional angel-wings or transformations back into innocent children. In constant danger of collapse, the film keeps pulling surprises: txt msg-addicted killers, an animated diagram of bullet trajectories through an unfortunate dwarf's brain. The first film blew up the country because it couldn't think of an ending, and this also has a lot of trouble signing off, with protracted deaths and redemptions for the heroes. Miike alternates clumsiness and confusion with exciting and powerful cinema. --Kim Newman

Aspect Ratio:	Anamorphic Wide Screen
Main Language:	Japanese
Region:	Region 0
Special Features:	Star And Director Filmographies, Scene Selection, Original Trailer, Miike Takashi Interview, Sloane Freer Film Notes, Miike Takashi Trailer Reel
Subtitles:	English
Year:	2000
Release Date:	February 24, 2003
Runtime:	95 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	T V D 3393
Label:	Asia Extreme
Keywords:	Subtitled, Dead, Alive, General, Wide, Screen, Thriller, Japanese
Genre:	Thriller