Genre:
Science Fiction
Release Date: 11/25/2003
SubTitles: English
Distributor/Studio: Kino
DragonBall Z meets
Blade Runner meets a
William S. Burroughs head trip in this hallucinogenic
sci-fi flick directed by
Takashi Miike. It is set in the year 2346 in the city-state of Yokohama, which has become thoroughly sinocized in the intervening 300 years. People speak a mishmash of Japanese, Chinese, and English and the streets are bathed in digital noise. The place is run with an iron fist by an exuberantly gay potentate named
Woo (
Richard Cheung) who, hoping to fashion a newer, crueler society, drugs the populace with a cocktail akin to Prozac-laced birth control pills. Pregnant women and children are sent to prison.
Woo's lead henchman is named
Honda (
Riki Takeuchi), a sneering uber-cop with a
Wayne Newton-style head of hair. The underground resistance is led by the English-speaking
Fon (
Terence Yin), his fierce girlfriend
Jyun (
Josie Ho), and a yellow-haired humanoid robot named
Ryo (
Sho Aikawa). Raids, kung-fu fistfights, and general weirdness ensue until the cataclysmic showdown between
Ryo and
Honda. This film is the third and final in
Miike's reported
Dead or Alive trilogy.
~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide