Izo begins with the death of Izo Okada, a real life samurai and assassin captured at the twilight of the Tokugawa shogunate. For his revolutionary actions against the emperor, he is brutally crucified and his bowels repeatedly speared at the hands of two guards as his life comes to a painful and uncomfortable end.
However, in Takashi Miike’s story, Izo does not die. He escapes the afterlife, transcending time and space to seek out lying sinners and punish them. His main target is a Japanese ruling council (in no specific time or place) where the deadpan Takeshi Kitano makes his appearance as the Prime Minister and Ryuhei Matsuda plays the androgynous emperor. The council follows Izo’s activities, deems him a minor error in the system, and sends out their troops to stop him from systematically killing his way up to them.
And so the plot proceeds like a disjointed and two hour long version of the recent Spike Jonze Adidas commercial, as Izo repetitively walks, falls or is pulled into brand new sets of randomized periods of time. Miike plays with the scenes anachronistically and creates some memorable images by inserting SWAT members into a peaceful 19th century village or samurai police to chase Izo through the city streets of modern day Japan. Izo’s enemies are often allies of the council, claiming they “have no personal grudge” against Izo and have simply been ordered to dispose of him.
The variety of enemies is another creative touch—our protag fights hordes of SWAT police, samurai, vampire insurance salesmen, zombie-like contemporary women, yakuza and even ex-footballer Bob Sapp. The fights however, are not at all entertaining. Miike provides cool, inspired build-ups, as the enemies surround Izo dramatically, but he films the scenes with bland, tedious shots and rarely is the action stylishly choreographed. Of course, all this is precisely intended because Izo is about condemning violence, rather than glorifying it.
Miike intercuts a great deal of World War II archival footage and even films one of Izo’s swordfights in this newsreel style to provide political commentary by tying contemporary and historical issues of war with Izo’s endless cycles of violence. The mysterious and seemingly totalitarian council means to stamp out an anomaly in their perfect system, but they do so by sending out troops and creating more violence. Since Izo himself was once an assassin, molded and sent out to kill under orders of his lord, the council is only perpetuating the problem. Izo is stabbed, slashed and shot, but the more he fights, the clearer it becomes that he cannot be killed.
As a result, this is a thoroughly fascinating film because it comes from a shock and gore master who has built his reputation on copious amounts of blood and violence. In the context of solely the film, it is decidedly anti-violence, taking a Buddhist approach. In one scene, Izo imposes on a religious service, denounces the lies of priests and urinates on their altar. Given the repetitive cycles of his suffering brought on by acts of violence, Izo’s salvation would seemingly be found in breaking the cycle.
But what does that say about Takashi Miike’s career as a director of these repeatedly violent films? Is he the council, constantly creating this violence? Or is he Izo, the victim of it? There is definite blurring of lines between real-life and fiction, especially in the casting of the splendid Kazuya Nakayama, a small-time Japanese supporting actor for years who finally gets a starring role here—an echo of Izo’s life. Perhaps there is a real life meaning in the film for Miike as well.
However, the film seems to be better for analysis more than anything else. Besides the impressive number of colorful and detailed sets, extras and costumes, little in this film is actually fun. While Miike keeps up his quota of gore, he completely flips his intentions by purposely making the film overlong, exhausting and repetitive in order to reinforce this new perspective on violence. Fans will surely be bewildered, while others who enjoy more experimental filmmaking might be pleasantly surprised with the depth. In the end though, the major problem with Izo is that it is a film far more fascinating on paper than it is on screen.
