Ley Lines

The final part of Miike's Triad Society trilogy offers a more street-level perspective on the tensions between Chinese and Japanese criminals than Shinjuku Triad Society or Rainy Dog. Three immigrant kids abandon their small town homes in rural Japan for the bright lights of Tokyo, where they suffer all the humiliations and setbacks of their kind and eventually come up against a psychotic Mr Big (guest star Takenaka at his most pervy). Miike characteristically minimises the sociological aspects and turns the film instead into a paean to romantic folly; the elegiac ending is up there with Pierrot le fou. The implication is that Japan itself is now the triad society, forcing those it denies 'membership' into desperate acts of love and crime.