Film

Gozu (2003)

Director: Takashi Miike

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Miike re-teams with writer Sato (who adapted Ichi the Killer for him) in an only partly successful attempt to crossbreed the yakuza and horror genres. When his gang superior Ozaki (Aikawa) becomes deranged and paranoid, Minami (Hideki Sone) is ordered to escort him to the 'yakuza dump' in Nagoya. Minami frets over betraying his oath of loyalty to Ozaki, but Ozaki appears to peg out in the car as they approach Nagoya - except that the corpse suddenly goes AWOL. Minami's quest to authenticate the death becomes nightmarish, bringing him up against a scary, transvestite coffee-shop manager (Sato giving himself a cameo), the hyper-lactating hostess of an inn and the spirit Gozu (human body, cow's head, long tongue). Throw in copious homosexual panic, some transgendered reincarnation and a messy rebirth and you have a movie that tries a little too hard for the midnight-show market while neglecting the dynamics of its own warped story-arc.

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