Lack of good storyline.

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Beautiful, moving film.

How wonderful it is to see this fine actress carry a film and carry it so beautifully.

First of all, this film is a sequel to Hitokiri (1969). Thats one of the classic Samurai swordfighting films with very fast action scenes thats still better than much we get to see today."Izo" starts where the first film ended. The protagonist is crucified for his crimes that he committed as a hired terrorist in the service of those who tried to restore the old regime.But he finds himself alive again, at first not understanding that he has taken on a demonic existence because his soul cannot rest and he must descend through the layers of hell in full consciousness.Following his motto from the first film, "Divine punishment", he sets out to take revenge on the world and on the gods for getting him into this whole mess.This film may be another blood bath, but the philosophical content is also enormous. Miike film-making at its very best, another no-budget production whose profundity may give the watcher stuff to think about for years.

It's hard to be familiar with the movies of Takashi Miike. Despite seeing the majority of his films released in America (and even a few that have yet to be released here...), it's hard not to feel like I've lost something in translation. I can appreciate the humor, the violence, the plots, etc... but there are usually parts that seem to lose me, and his movies typically require repeated viewings. It's not that I'm particularly new to the films he creates or the films of Japanese directors in general -- the point I'm trying to illustrate is that you have to WANT to appreciate his films. You have to work hard sometimes to get into what he's doing, because he often throws conventional plot points, "hooks" that grab you, and structure, out the window. Even his most fairly straightforward films take many detours into the bizarre (see the tank randomly showing up in "Family" or the rocket launcher that comes out on nowhere in at least two of his films!).So, it's not surprising that this is one of Miike's works that hasn't gotten quite the attention of the immediately-gratifying "Ichi the Killer" or "Audition". Using the "hook" of a sword fighting epic initially gets people interested in this film, but seeing no conventional plot line or point to what is happening turns most people off, it seems. This confuses me -- though I definitely didn't grasp everything upon the first viewing of this, I was still instantly amazed at what Miike has set up here: A journey through one man's tortured soul. Even if you don't feel like you understand everything that's happening, you still realize this film is genius -- maybe you just haven't figured out why yet.Upon repeated viewings, however, I figured out why. You have to kind of look in between the lines on this one. This film is powerful, epic, emotional, and even darkly comedic. Yes, on the surface this film is basically just a journey through someone's afterlife. However, beyond that, the film pours on the flashy imagery, ultraviolence, and powerful emotions to an almost suffocating degree. In a lot of ways, this film reminds me of "El Topo" -- a movie that is disguised as a genre effort (El Topo being a Western, this being a samurai swordfighting film) that uses the basic genre outlines but explores topics deeper than have ever been covered in the genre before...I think those who overlook this film simply were expecting a straightforward swordfighting movie, which this film clearly isn't. It's way better than that, and it's honestly probably the best film to come out in the last decade. It's one of the few films that have ever "moved" me. It is somewhat challenging cinema, and you might need a decent background in Japanese culture/mysticism/forces to totally understand everything in this movie. Unfortunately, most people won't bother. But for those who like to think a little bit, remember that this film REQUIRES repeated viewings.A masterpiece and easily proves Miike's talent more so than any of his other films so far.

Well everybody knows what we are expecting when we see a Miike film. He is one of the very few surrealist horror director in the world. This movie is everything El Topo,Terminator, Judge Dread, Rambo,Gothic & Roman Epics put into one. The story is supposed to be of a warrior who has returned to earth for revenge. The torture scenes will make you flinch, the various episodes will make you scratch your head and with all those crazy things you will still appreciate Miike's effort. The characters, the crazy ways they kill him, Izo's flawless performance, the music, the editing, the camera angle's everything is special. Its more like Miike has donned the cap of a psychotic philosopher who goes to preach the world with blood. Its really difficult to get a DVD version, but I think if you are a Miike fan you should definitely give this movie a shot. Having seen more weird things in his movies than in my whole life I can safely say you will not be disappointed. I rate this one 7/10

After watching perhaps the most reckless, surreal, mystical-style take on the ultra-bloody grind-house samurai epic, I'm not too sure who is more relentless, its main character- the unstoppable un-dead/spirit Izo (Kazuya Nakayama, likely in the performance of a career, for better &/or worse) or its director Takashi Miike. It's been compared to both Greek mythology and Jodorowsky's El Topo, and I can definitely see credence in both examples. In the first half hour to forty five minutes, actually longer if you account for, um, story, you're not sure precisely what the hell (no pun intended) is going on. Izo, at the start, gets crucified, and then we learn after a while (err, it's pretty obvious) he was quite the warrior and swordsman, who is out for vengeance as he comes back as an un-crushable spirit. Later on, we get a view into what tags along with him, in a female form, as a 'fragment', but for the most part one can only try to assume that Izo is on a collision course to nowhere, a pure embodiment of nihilistic anarchy who could be the Terminator in blood-eyed samurai garb if he/it actually had the mission.I can't deny that Miike deserves an 'A' for effort on this sort of thing, but it's also the kind of project that veers the closest of all the work I've seen of his so far to that most overused of terms- pretentious (albeit I haven't dug deep enough into his oeuvre to make that definitive). I mean, really, what are we to make of cut-aways at varied, completely random times of newsreel footage of dictators and famous world wars and atom bombs going off in black and white, sometimes in reverse mode, or in sped-up mode? What about a guy who comes in and out of the (very loosely laid) story to do acoustic-guitar musical numbers? It does all connect, I suppose, to the sort of random madness and almost Superman-like ability to not get really that harmed, unless around his quasi-kryptonite of the order of the 'Soul-fragment'. A lot of what ends up popping up as sort of the history of Izo, before he was turned into the ultimate grudge with a sword, would be really interesting on its own, but strung together like this with the rest of the picture made it frustrating for me. Perhaps I wasn't ready enough for all of this, but for all of the virtuosity that Miike is going for with his bloody, full-blown surreal odyssey, only some of it works well while the rest falls into 'huh' mode.But the rest of this picture is what's almost teasingly ironic about Izo. As a swordplay movie, the kind that delivers the goods on action set-pieces and violence galore, doesn't disappoint, and if anything it shows Miike knows this kind of picture, which is why in a sense he's probably trying to lampoon it underneath the very dark and Gothic exterior. Nakayama is a real force to be reckoned with, and he works well in his all-too-limited role. It's always hard to do variations on the same style of killing- slicing a sword in the blink of an eye, and sometimes seeing the (appropriately) blood-soaked and flesh-torn aftermath, or in an immediate cut-away- and Miike pulls out his entire arsenal of tricks, including a set piece with the one American actor- Bob Sapp- who barely puts up a front either despite his huge size. But even with the creativity in many of Izo's murder sequences jarring and excitingly outrageous, the repetition becomes a little tiresome. And it wasn't that the picture was too confusing, though it does contain that side of the El Topo, where it's basically intentional for it to go in circle's around people's heads.The messages that barrage the viewer though through the content (like in one scene where Izo is at a school and you-guess-what happens and there are cutaways to classrooms where kids are asked to define 'love', 'nation', and other ultra big words taken for granted) are what become fuzzy or just too off-kilter for their own good. For someone who is usually so sharp on the edge with satire, Miike here is trying to scrape up enough with the action to justify it being there, because, of course, Izo's world is in some otherworldly plain of Greek tragedy, Buddhism, and other factions that are also connected to the true depravities and horrors of the world. But it's too much on one plate, and there's definitely the sense of overload. It's the kind of picture where the director does, more often than not, stumble on his face with his own ambitions; that being said, I'd much rather see a movie by Miike that only reaches up so high to its ideals than for a lesser filmmaker to just churn out typical product. Izo is anything but typical product, and it follows no rules (and destroys much like its character), which becomes part of the problem, at least on a first viewing.