User Reviews

Anyone expecting "just another Miike flick" might get very disappointed, as I'd claim this remake, of Kinji Fukasaku's 1975 success, to differ quite much from Miike's other works. There's a lack of comic events here, while the amount of violence is steady and non-compromising straight throughout the movie. While Miike's other works may have a sort of balance between the cold terror of Yakuza violence and fun punchlines, dark and light or whatever you'd like, this piece is leaning way more to the darker side. No one gets away with anything, women and men, they're all facing their dramatic paths down the line.

As I've mentioned above, the piece feels quite different, and at the beginning I thought it may even be bad. However, such a case didn't await me and afterward I thought it was all good. Different, but good. I prefer the other works of Miike, but that didn't disqualify this one to be a good view. Shattering, touching and filled up with non-sympathy. 7/10.

If Japan is "perfect", how does "imperfection" look like? The protagonist in this movie embodies exactly that. Which takes away a lot of the "Scarface"-like thriller elements. There is a story about a guy stepping up in a mafia environment, but his stoic anti-will, the fact he hurts EVERYone - helpers, supporters, lovers and foes - is meant to be allegorically political.

It's stated somewhere and in fact, there's some few scenes that appear very illogical. Not so, if you watch the movies "the right way".

Movie is calm, depressing, melancholic, bloody painful, sometimes crazy (in one scene he shoots at everyone: police, bypassers etc., then going "SORRY, OUTTA AMMO!" and delivers himself).

Good, disturbing, mature Miike-movie. Not as cartoonish as most of his films.

Who said only Americans had the right to remake, defile or reinterpret, their crime classics? By adding a new 40-minute third act on Kinji Fukasaku's original 1975 film Takashi Miike firmly leans towards the second option. A reinterpetation faithful in spirit and gritty hardboiled realism to the original yet still as much a Miike film as anything else he's done, this reflected in the Japanese title of the movie ('New' Graveyard of Honor), in itself perhaps a tribute to Fukasaku's sequel series 'New' Battles Without Honor and Humanity, and the numerous gonzo stylistic flashes that fully complement the hand-held hyperkinetic style Fukasaku pioneered and which Miike here reintroduces, not in an attempt to ape the original film and not to the extent that Fukasaku used that style nor with the same deftness, but as a visual technique Miike makes his own for the duration of the film.

As with the original film, the emphasis here is not on a Scarface-like rags-to-riches arch but on downfall, one long unbroken fall from grace, an ode to self-destruction and alienation as only the Japanese know how to do them. The brooding yakuza protagonist finds himself in a vicious endless cycle of violence as meaningless as the catalyst that kicked it into motion (a two-hour visit at the dentist by his boss) and there's no bottom or depth low enough for him to sink to.

Miike follows all this in a sombre distanced way, allowing the brutal stabbings and shootings to take place without either glorifying or shying away from them, this helped to a good degree by a languid jazzy score and a lack of depth or dimension to the supporting characters or indeed the protagonist. We don't know these people. We don't know any more about the protagonist after two hours than we did after he first stops a yakuza hit-man by breaking a chair on his head. He goes about killing people and shooting dope, stopping only long enough to rape his girlfriend or signal to the cops that he's out of bullets.

Miike being Miike, the movie is still crazy and OTT, as though he doesn't want us to take it anymore serious than we need to. I'm a big fan of yakuza pictures and Miike's Graveyard remake ranks highly among them, quite possibly the best of the several he's done. More than two hours long, the movie feels epic without ever calling attention to itself as such. Miike is not doing THE GODFATHER any more than he's doing SCARFACE. Curiously for a remake and especially compared to slick Hollywood gangster movies or quirky crimedies, Graveyard is original above all else. If I have a problem with it, is only in the hard edge of the video look on which Miike (probably for reasons of budget) insists on shooting, and that 15 minutes could've been trimmed for tightness.

Or better Miike Style. Although this one is different from his other movies. Not in terms of violence (he likes his violence and blood, so be aware of that, no faint hearted should watch this), but more film-making wise!

He changes Genres as he likes (from Horror to Action to Thriller), but his movies all feel kind of the same. Maybe this one is different, because it is a remake of another Japanese movie or maybe he went out and thought, let's try something different this time. Whatever the reasons, the result is indeed one of his better offerings (in my view) of all his output. This will not be the movie he will be remembered by, his cult status was achieved by movies like "Ichi The Killer", "Dead or Alive" series or "Audition", but it's one you should watch!

Takashi Miike has a knack at Yakuza thrillers. Some might not be very good, some might be some odd sorts of deranged masterpieces. But with Graveyard of Honor, I can only imagine how fantastic the original Kinji Fukasaku film from the 70s was if this might possibly be Miike's best "serious" Yakuza movie. This is to say that Miike turns down a somewhat typical level of madcap gore and humor for an approach that is kind of staggering, as though Cassavetes had some input on the screenplay (or Abel Ferrara ala Bad Lieutenant for that matter). It's a solid piece of drama of a man, Rikuo Ishimatsu (in a performance that, within the range, is one of a lifetime from Gorô Kishitani ala young Mifune), who unwittingly becomes apart of a crime family after saving its boss while working as a dishwasher. He serves some time for attempting to kill another gangster, he gets out, the years pass and he gets bitter, and in a fit of panic he bites the hand that feeds him - he shoots his own boss.

From here on it's a path right to hell that Ishimatsu takes. Already one has seen him as a character with some demons he has trouble quelling. He's tough, maybe too tough, and doesn't have much of a sense of humor (which includes around his woman, a timid creature who soon gets into the dank mess that Ishimatsu puts himself into). He also turns into a full-fledged junkie, and burns more bridges than one could ever fathom. What Miike crafts here is something that might not be his most inventive work, but it displays him as someone who has the range to plunge into real bloodshed and tragedy. It's almost the reversal of the cartoonish mayhem of Ichi the Killer - where that you almost were given permission to chuckle at the carnage and excess of violence, in Graveyard of Honor it's grim, ugly, the blood flowing hard and with bodies writhing in total agony. It's a rare instance for the director to present things about as realistic as he'll get, in edgy hand-held and compositions.

But there is some style that Miike puts, appropriately and with an creative sensibility, on the material. The music crooning on and off is like that of New York jazz from the late 50s and early 60s, and I'm almost reminded of some lucid nightmare of a beatnik on junk ala William S. Burroughs and pulp fiction. As the downward spiral continues for this character, even if it starts to seem unlikely that it would go this far (the escape from prison alone, intense for the self-inflicted horror done to himself, is just enough to swallow), we go right down with this character in his oblivion. It's hard to turn away, and there are moments that are gruesome not so much for what's shown, which can be a lot, but the emotional impact. Not to sound pretentious, but I'm almost reminded of some damned Shakespearan king or something, only here it's a sensibility of total unadulterated nihilism that propels Ishimatsu to his horror of an end.

On the surface, it doesn't feel a whole lot different from other Miike Yakuza fare. Yet it's a little maturer, a little more tightly crafted and developed with the characters, and it has the mood of a filmmaker working outside of his reputation as a showman or provocateur. It's a real movie, one of the best in the Yakuza realm.

Goro Kishitani was a thrill to watch as the main character of this film. He was a totally amoral gangster that was inducted into the Yakuza by saving the godfather's life. In that sense he had no knowledge of the rules of the family and made some mistakes - one fatal.

The rest of the film deals with his run from the family and the attempts of his prison brother, a high family member, to protect him. It just keeps getting more bizarre as he manages an escape from prison in a way that I would describe as vile and gross - but it worked! His treatment of women was the lowest. There are two or three rape scenes. There is certainly a lot of violence, but not gross violence.

It was a fascinating story directed by Takashi Miike (Ichi the Killer, Hostel).

This is one movie that needs to be released in the West, it is a hardcore dark violent drama, not the typical cartoony Miike. This is probably one of the better Miike movies I've seen, no bizarre cartoon violence or strange events, a straight up yakuza crime violence extravaganza, and apparently a remake of a 1975 movie of the same name. Definitely better than the sort of dragging Araburu Tamashitachi. The lead character Ishimatsu is played by Kishitani Goro, the bad guy from "Returner". In an interview on the DVD, Miike said he wanted to make a movie about a man who didn't learn to be a Yakuza by becoming a Yakuza, but who was born that way... The main character is BAD, far worse than "Ichi the Killer's" Kakihara. Whereas Kakihara is a sort of good-natured amoral sado-masochist, Ishimatsu is a bad natured insane sociopathic drug addict killer rapist. Lots of corpses in this one, men, women, doesn't matter to Ishimatsu. Even more corpses than Ichi the killer or Dead or Alive, and some real violent and realistic knife kills and handgun assassinations, pipe beatings, and other fun. Not for people who shy away from realistic violence and sadism.

BATTLE ROYALE was the movie that brought the name Kinji Fukasaku to the lips of most people in the west for the first time, but he'd made his name in Japan many years earlier with a series of gritty and violent gangster movies that changed the face of the genre. In 1975 he made one such movie, called GRAVEYARD OF HONOR. In 2002, Takashi Miike decided to make a movie called GRAVEYARD OF HONOR too.

I haven't seen Fukasaku's original movie, so I have no idea how Miike's version compares. Normally you would expect a Miike movie to bear little resemblance to its source material, but in this case I'm not so sure.

GRAVEYARD OF HONOR tells the story of a man called Ishimatsu (Goro Kishitani), who is propelled into a relatively high ranking position in the Yakuza after saving the family head's life. His violent personality makes him feared and perhaps respected, but eventually gets him into trouble. He p***es off the family, and to such a degree that no little finger is going to get him off the hook. The stage is set for a small scale gang war.

GRAVEYARD OF HONOR is a much more conventional yakuza movie than any of his others, e.g. DEAD OR ALIVE. It's played pretty much straight, missing the wit and manic invention that characterises Miike at his most playful. Unfortunately, it's also missing the complex 3-dimensional characters that make Miike's more dramatic movies so good. It's a fairly straight genre movie that doesn't scratch particularly deep below the surface, in other words. This may be because Miike wished to stay faithful to the source material, but it is rather a surprise from the director whose work is normally amongst the most inventive in the world. Rather a disappointment, too.

Miike can definitely do straight drama, but in movies like RAINY DOG and BLUES HARP it is the fascinating, believable and sympathetic characters that make the films stand out from the crowd. Characters in GRAVEYARD OF HONOR are much harder to relate to, and their intentions and motivations are often unclear or seemingly thin. In particular it's hard to understand Ishimatsu's actions, beyond the facts that he's very violent and not very smart. It's very hard to empathasize or even sympathize with him, and very difficult to actually like or care for him too. Even an anti-hero needs some humanity we can relate to, or at least a shed load of charisma. Goro Kishitani injects his character with neither.

I'd been led to expect GRAVEYARD OF HONOR to be somewhat action packed, and there are a few scenes of fairly brutal violence but nothing like the cool stylised action of DEAD OR ALIVE: FINAL. In fact, most of the movie is very slow - rather boring even. I actually took a break for an hour and a half in the middle to go and do some work, which isn't a great sign

GRAVEYARD OF HONOR is probably not a bad gangster movie, but it is very disappointing as a Takashi Miike movie. Pretty much any director could have handled the job, and only a couple of scenes show any of Miike's characteristic style, wit or perverse genius. Basically, I'd hoped for something more.

Not recommended much.

The ebay DVD has a decent anamorphic transfer, presumably ripped from the Japanese release and re-encoded to fit on a DVD-5. Sound is functional stereo, and subtitles are optional and very well translated. If you want to see the movie, this is your best option for now.

I usually enjoy Miike, I kind of like his weird, pretty sick sense of humor that never manifests itself in anything overtly funny. But I felt like I was wasting my time watching this one. It's not even because the main character is a completely depraved, psychopathic piece of scum, it's the fact that his behavior should have gotten him killed within the first ten minutes. But instead he keeps getting away with comitting one heinous act of violence after the other. Which could potentially be entertaining, but instead the whole thing just felt pointless, because you do not sympathize at all with the guy (or anyone else for that matter). Maybe this time I didn't get the joke.

Most of Miike's yakuza movies include alot of humor and over the top gore, in which I love. I was sort of expecting that with this movie and had my hopes up high, but I was introduced to a new style of Yakuza movie.

Ishimatsu is a dishwasher at a resturaunt who saves the life of a Yakuza boss when a assassin was ordered to kill him at Ishimatsu's resturaunt. Ishimatsu is let into the family at a high rank and but he isn't what was expected. He starts p***ing people off in the family by starting a little gang-war, and after theres a settlment between the two gangs, they are all trying to get rid of Ishimatsu. He also gets pretty wound up with heroin.

Alot of character develoupment in this movie. The movie has a low tone but glossy color that sets and really good atmosphere with a slow jazz soundtrack.

The blood in this movie isnt very abundent but the violence is strong a realistic. Not very many bloodsprays like in most of Miike's movies, but you dont really look for that because IMHO this movie is so stylish without the need of strong blood or gore.

It doesnt seem like to many people like this movie but when I got done watching this movie I felt really good like I have never felt after a movie.

Takashi Miike was on fire in the late 90s/early 2000s, putting out a ton of quality movies in a short space of time. Graveyard of Honor is no exception, and if it counts as a remake, might be one of the better one out there.

Granted, I think it's a little bloated at 131 minutes, but not too much. There's also a lot of brutal yazuka violence - as well as a lot of violence/sexual violence towards women in the first half - and some other unpleasant scenes that could (understandably) put some viewers off.

I did mostly like it, though. To make a movie with such an awful person for a protagonist and still have most viewers not want to turn it off before it ends is impressive. It makes for a gritty, sometimes harrowing, but ultimately the engrossing yakuza crime/thriller.

This is probably the worst Miike I've seen so far. He is notorious for out of this world violence and perverse humour, but while other of his films are fun to watch because of ingenious directing this one is just as plain as a bare butt. The only thing that marks this film is totally pointless violence and a repulsive protagonist. This film really has nothing to offer, so my advise would be not to waste any time on it. It seems most of the people commenting on this film view this mind-numbing violence as this flick's exceptional merit - this somehow arouses a suspicion that they themselves must be psychopaths just like the main protagonist, there is no other way that anyone could ever sympathise with such a person or find the horrendous occurrences enjoyable.

A slow burning Miike movie interspersed with bouts of extreme and graphic violence that is toe-curling real. I found the story almost Shakespearian in its handling of the dishwashers "journey to hell" and the strong themes of honour and loyalty that run throughout. I find Miikes misogynistic treatment of women disturbing, but interesting. He seems to relish every kick and slap.. but then he relishes the violence wreaked on everyone. It just jars (my Western sensibility ?)so much to see Ishimatsu brutalise his "wife".

Look out for Miike as the assassin who Ishimatsu knocks out and thereby starts his self-destructing rampage ... and what a scene ! As good as the intro of "Dead or Alive"

I may try to find Kinji Fukasaku's 1975 original which was equally controversial on its release....

All I can say is move over Coppola and Scorsese.. here comes Miike..

This film, despite some thoughtful stuff in the final act, is strangely derivative of Takeshi Kitano (which isn't necessarily a good thing in my book). Much like Sonatine we've got a non-expressive, self-destructive protagonist who does some violent stuff while a repetitive low-rent jazz soundtrack warbles in the background. And the editing is sadistic - watch a guy slip around on ice for 45 seconds straight, watch a guy climb a rooftop ladder for 35 seconds, watch seemingly identical rape scenes, watch seemingly identical heroin usage scenes, and my personal favorite: watch the lead actor scowl into the camera over and over and over, blah blah blah. While there is no doubt that it is a Miike in the final analysis, I find it almost sacrilegious to see him borrowing so blatantly from the hack playbook of Beat Takeshi. He even put him in Izo, for cryin' out loud.

Gorô Kishitani plays Rikuo Ishimatsu a mid level Yakuza heavy in Takashi Miike's (sort of) remake of the classic 1970's movie.

It's a remake of an older movie but apart from a few similar scenes and some other call backs it's mostly it's own original thing.

It's a Miike movie through and through with everything you would expect - Extreme violence with buckets of blood, offbeat characters, dark humour and a cool mean streak throughout.

This is a pretty insane movie which features one of the most repugnant main characters in any movie ever.

Ishimatsu is a scumbag and the movie doesn't try to make you relate to him or make him sympathetic, you are just there to witness his horrific actions.

If you like Miike's other movies then this is a no brainer for fans and it's not exactly a laugh riot but it's intense as hell, stylish and disturbing.

If that's you're thing then check it out.