Shinjuku Triad Society

Even viewers hardened to the perversities which tend to crop up in Japanese exploitation genres may find themselves rubbing their eyes at some of the images and incidents in Miike's extremist thriller about a Taiwanese triad gang muscling in on traditional yakuza territory in Tokyo. A near-psychotic 'lone wolf' from Shinjuku police station sets out to bust the Dragon's Claw gang for its involvement in drugs, body-parts trading, extortion racketeering and male prostitution; one obstacle is that his own (sexually ambivalent) younger brother is a legal adviser to the gang, which is fronted by a deranged gay sadist (Taguchi, from the Tetsuo films). Just when you think that a scene of sodomy - used as an aid to police interrogation - can't be topped, along comes an eye-gouging or another coke-fuelled blow job to keep things moving. Miike's stylish, gleeful direction establishes him as the most distinctive new 'voice' in the genre since Rokuro Mochizuki.