Poor bastard! You won’t curse the CSA again when you see the fate of melancholy hitman Yujiro; his ex just turns up after ten years or so and just dumps his kid on him! And that’s just one of two or three amusing episodes in this very disappointing drama from Takashi Miike.
Yujiro, who won’t go out when it’s raining, sulks around the streets with young Ah Chen in tow, occasionally bumping off the odd target until a victim’s brother decides to take revenge. He flees to a beach house with junior and a prostitute, Lily, and then stays there for what seems like an eternity. Ah Chen can’t talk by the way, and Yujiro seems to have a permanent monk-on so he hardly says a word either – the dialogue is sparse to say the least. The tedium is relinquished after a while when this glum, cheerless family find a moped buried on the beach, and ride off at a heart-pumping three miles-per-hour towards the disappointingly restrained conclusion.
Rainy Dog is one hell of a pessimistic movie, the fact that it rains constantly upon the boring characters adds tenfold to its depressing nature. Like I said, there’s a couple of amusing moments here. One is when Yujiro leaves his kid to sleep in a box out in the rain whilst he’s in a brothel tucking into kipper and heroin – caught between the pink and the brown so to speak. And then there’s the vagrant having a piss; his cock has been censored out with fluorescent green scribble making it look as if his pubes have gone Code Red! There you go. A couple. Rainy Dog isn’t weird enough to put any real strain on your steel plate, and its action level is practically zero; you’d have no trouble counting all the gunshots if you could stay awake between them, and the only thing that can save this is Miike’s talent as a director, which here is sadly wasted.
Japan’s most controversial director, notorious for his dauntingly prolific output and willingness to push the boundaries of taste. Miike started working as an assistant director in the late 80s, before moving into making straight-to-video thrillers in 1991. He made his feature debut in 1995 with the violent cop thriller Shinjuku Triad Society, and since then has averaged around seven films year.
His best best known pictures are the deeply twisted love story Audition, the blackly comic gorefest Ichi the Killer, cannibal comedy musical Happiness of the Katakuris and the often surreal Dead or Alive trilogy. Films such as The Bird People in China and Sabu showed a more restrained side. A true original, Miike remains one of the most exciting directors around.
