Agitator

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The yakuza way we saw too much...

Agitator is a pretty unique Miike Takashi movie. Not because it would be one of his best or his worst movies as a director. But because it's never overcoming the codes of the genre. Agitator is 2 hours and a half of cliché situations of the yakuza eiga genre which are never treated with a drop of singularity. Furthermore, the lack of character development of the screenplay never allows the movie to be correct "old school" yakuza eiga. Old school meaning here trying to reproduce the dry realism of jitsuroku movies (yakuza eigas based on true stories such as the Battles without honor and humanity series). Even those delirious ideas that can usually save Miike's movies from total mediocrity don't work here: the gratuitious flash backs are not even funny and the final gunfight lacks of the usual energy of Miike's ends. Stylistically, most of the movie is flat. What a pity since if the yakuza eiga gave Miike some of his worst movies (Dead or alive 1 and 3) it gave him some of his (relatively) most achieved movies (Shinjuku triad society, Rainy dog).