I'd heard many good things about Rainy Dog, the 2nd installment in the "Black Society" trilogy that Takashi Miike directed (others include very good Shinjuku Triad Society and the great Ley Lines), that I was glad that most of my expectations were met. What specifically they all were I can't all remember, but what's impressive about the picture- all shot in China during the rainy season, obviously- is how the material grew on me, how I found myself connected after a while with the characters' plight into their own horror, and that there were some tender moments when they finally connected. Its premise could have been shoddy or just repetitive of other pictures (yakuza hit-man in semi-exile in China gets a kid dropped on him that he didn't know what his while doing odd jobs here and there), but Miike treats it seriously, as well as with the violent content, and it's possibly the first really interesting picture of Miike's concerning fathers and sons.
The setting itself is murky and drab, perfect for a kind of symbolic mode of the character played by Sho Aikawa (often going bat-s*** in Miike's films like the DOA series, here more subtle and downbeat, maybe a once bad-ass now on hard times), and there's even hints of the neo-realist period when seeing those scenes where the little boy is stuck in the alley, for days on end as Aikawa is held up with the hooker in the house, scrounging for garbage and shelter and a lone dog. Miike is careful in directing these scenes between Aikaway and the boy, who is deaf and dumb and becomes witness by proxy of unadulterated attachment to the 'hits' his father has to do, but at first I wasn't entirely sure of Miike's motives in such simple stuff that dragged on like a kid following his father around the streets.
By the third act, when the boy and father and the hooker are all on the run from some p-o'd mobsters, then it really gains in fascination and the humanity of this plight. I loved one little moment when the boy finds the motorcycle in the sand and Aikawa, who is reluctant to join in with the boy and the woman to get it out, joins in and there's a moment of sheer happiness in the midst of the gloom and despair (or, conversely, that shattering revelation when the child screams in the climax). And there are other little moments as well, including those when Miike has to show the violence and, as in a Graveyard of Honor project, it's nothing really funny or outrageous: it just is, and it fits in with the dire state of affairs in the rain, which never ever stops. It's a director knowing how to maneuver the material well- if occasionally dipping into the pretentious- and crafting an appealing tale amidst a foreign setting. While maybe too depressing for most, it is a sign of the director working at full force of his powers, if not entirely at a great-film mode.
The setting itself is murky and drab, perfect for a kind of symbolic mode of the character played by Sho Aikawa (often going bat-s*** in Miike's films like the DOA series, here more subtle and downbeat, maybe a once bad-ass now on hard times), and there's even hints of the neo-realist period when seeing those scenes where the little boy is stuck in the alley, for days on end as Aikawa is held up with the hooker in the house, scrounging for garbage and shelter and a lone dog. Miike is careful in directing these scenes between Aikaway and the boy, who is deaf and dumb and becomes witness by proxy of unadulterated attachment to the 'hits' his father has to do, but at first I wasn't entirely sure of Miike's motives in such simple stuff that dragged on like a kid following his father around the streets.
By the third act, when the boy and father and the hooker are all on the run from some p-o'd mobsters, then it really gains in fascination and the humanity of this plight. I loved one little moment when the boy finds the motorcycle in the sand and Aikawa, who is reluctant to join in with the boy and the woman to get it out, joins in and there's a moment of sheer happiness in the midst of the gloom and despair (or, conversely, that shattering revelation when the child screams in the climax). And there are other little moments as well, including those when Miike has to show the violence and, as in a Graveyard of Honor project, it's nothing really funny or outrageous: it just is, and it fits in with the dire state of affairs in the rain, which never ever stops. It's a director knowing how to maneuver the material well- if occasionally dipping into the pretentious- and crafting an appealing tale amidst a foreign setting. While maybe too depressing for most, it is a sign of the director working at full force of his powers, if not entirely at a great-film mode.