GOZU (3 outta 5 stars) This is a typically extreme and bizarre visual feast from the mind of director Takashi Miike... marred only by the lack of any forward momentum of the storyline. One weird scene follows another until... they just ran out of ideas for weird scenes, I guess. Basically, the movie deals with a Yakuza gangster who is ordered to kill a colleague while on a road trip. The colleague dies by accident and, when the gangster stops in a small village to phone in his report, the corpse disappears from the front seat of the car. The movie is certainly not boring and a lot of fun to watch but if you are familiar with other Miike films you may find that this movie is nothing but a hodge-podge of elements from his more memorable movies. If you are a Miike novice and you enjoy this movie at all you will definitely be thrilled by his other works ("Audition", "Izo", "Ichi the Killer") but I don't really think this would be the best intro to his stylish oeuvre.
