anyone new to the incredibly prolific takashi miike work might want to think twice about make this startling film their first experience of this truly maverick director . in keep with miike work practice of take any work that come his way and then graft his own sensibility onto the script and this be at heart a fairly basic yakuza thriller and with a morally ambiguous cop chase a gang which his lawyer brother have fall in with . what take the movie out of the realm of the same old same old however and be the utterly unflinching attitude so some of the most sudden and horrific violence see in today cinema . and this isn not that nice cool and clean violence so beloved of u cinema this stuff be nasty and painful and hurt . that say and the pace be breakneck and the character be unusual without be just be burden with stock eccentricity and miike sense of humour reveals itself and the most unexpected moment and and his camera be never quite where you expect it to be and make it hard to look away from the screen and whatever he might be show you . it doesn not have the ohmigod end of dead or alive and but if youre not squeamish and now the time to get on board the miike bandwagon before he end up on some hollywood studio new john woo shop list .