Leofwine_draca LEY LINES is the third and final part of an unconnected gangster trilogy by Takashi Miike, following on from SHINJUKU TRIAD SOCIETY and RAINY DOG. Once again the focus is on a youthful group of Chinese Triads, this time living in Japan and struggling to make ends meet. The film begins on a light and comic tone as the men mess around and have fun, but then they get involved with a criminal element and things turn deadly. I found this film to be pretty slow and unfocused, if I'm honest, lacking in the kind of basic characterisation that would make the lives of the characters we're watching interesting. Miike can't resist throwing in some perverse and explicit sexual elements but they add nothing to the overall quality of what is a largely lacklustre film.

missraze I watched the film because Kitamura Kazuki was in it, his sexy beautiful perfect self. And Takashi Miike directing it was the added incentive. But I ended up discovering a film that was rich with emotive content, scenery and symbolism. And Kitamura. Basically the film is about Chinese gaijin (Japanese word for "foreigner"), and their strife to survive in the land of the rising sun. You have an average guy called Ryuichi, his soft-hearted, soft- spoken younger brother called Shunrei, and their less than wily childhood friend Chang. They end up befriending a prostitute from Shanghai called Anita, even after she quite easily mugs them their first day in the big city. If it weren't for Shunrei feeling bad for her looking badly beaten up, she might not have been taken along for their dangerous ride, down a perilous path rife with triad and yakuza gangsters and pimps. Ryuichi actually beats the mess out of his brother for slowing them down with his sentimental ways. At first and throughout the whole movie, his temper might have seemed contemptible, but when they all meet their sticky end honestly because Shunrei decided to make a fateful pit-stop on their way fleeing out the country as scheduled, everyone should understand why Ryuichi was so hard on the guy. There is also what I would call symbolism, specifically with nursery rhymes and childhood fables. Especially for tribal people, religions and ethnic groups, fables and songs are important. They (are meant to) teach values, morals, community... The movie even begins with Japanese kids singing a Japanese nursery rhyme, in red lighting. And Ryuichi and Shunrei as kids were racially bullied in the middle of their singing, then the kids continued along their path singing in Japanese, leaving the two brothers by themselves, looking on longingly. Miike being Korean originally probably understands this. And yes I repeat Ryuichi and Shunrei are Chinese; their Japanese names either is from being "hafu" or half Japanese, or the pressure on the non-Japanese of Far East Asian descent to try to convince Japanese people that they are Japanese, through a name change.Furthermore, throughout the movie there is a gangster from Shanghai on their tail. He's not exactly nice but he did forewarn the brothers and Chang that they weren't too cut out for hard survival on Shinjuku's streets, particularly as Chinese foreigners, and under-educated, broke and rural on top of that. And this gangster on the outside is someone who can make you follow a command with not even the point of a finger lest what he would do, but in private, he still locks and shields himself in a dark cellar of a bedroom, like a scared little boy, with many candles for lights as a meditative atmosphere, and no electricity to entertain him like a TV or a radio. His sole entertainment is fables originating in Shanghai, preferably told by attractive Chinese women exclusively from Shanghai, even if they're a prostitute like Anita. Or he literally will go into a manic depression. These scenes are also told in red lighting, like the opening scene with the schoolchildren singing. Red in film as I understand is a symbol for bad luck or impending doom. So I feel there is a negative connotation with nursery rhymes, because it is a reminder of their adversity as non-Japanese children, and homesickness for their motherland. The film even ends with them singing while covered in blood, which is red. This whole film is one depiction of how hard it can be to live in Japan from overseas.There's other things in the film to hammer down the message of racial prejudice, like a black gaijin, whose character doesn't last long before ill fate meets him, even though he speaks more than good Japanese, and can even use chopsticks, despite the Chinese gangster telling the brothers that they can survive in Japan if they perfected their Japanese accents. Apparently even doing that doesn't help a black foreigner, at least in his field of work: They experience a brief stint in substance dealing (I wouldn't call it drug dealing because the substance they were selling looked to be a cocktail of chemicals and gasoline to huff). There's some comedy though I'd call it dark comedy, such as how silly Chang looks and talks while bleeding, or how angry yakuza get about simple backtalk, or how naughty Anita is and talks before, during and after a beatdown. There's not too much sex and just enough asskicking and blood (and Kitamura) to keep you, or at least me, going. Oh yea, nothing good happens in this movie. Nothing. But the movie is great. It's certainly not like modern Asian film, especially the ones set in big East Asian cities. This movie is quite contently 90s Asia. There's nothing glamorous at all, anywhere. Not in hair, wardrobe or backdrop, nor soundtrack. Basically this isn't for date night or kids who like Jpop and Kpop. This is for people who like and who can handle a mature punch to the nose of reality, particularly in Japan's post bubble economy, or when many of their richest and poorest citizens lost everything; the Japanese Great Depression of the 80s and 90s. I'll be thinking of this movie for a while. And Kitamura (wistful sigh).

Polaris_DiB Anyone who gets tired of Miike's over-the-top style would do well to watch the Black Society Trilogy, three movies with a shared theme of transnational alienation in the underground that stick out as some of his more sober and effective films. Ley Lines is the story of three friends, half Chinese, half Japanese, who run away from home to try to survive in Tokyo. Needless to say, their lives in the underground aren't too successful, as through various run-ins with a Shanghaian prostitute, a drug dealer, and a crime lord named Wong, most of them end up dead.Labeled on the back of the ArtsMagic DVD as being an exploration into racism, that aspect covers only about a third of what is going on here. There are many discussions in the movie, indeed, about race, oftentimes with racial slurs bleeped out (Miike is not one to censor himself, so someone else must have censored him; on the other hand, not all bad words and slurs are censored, so maybe the censorship was purposeful to provide a bit of ambiguity as to what the characters are actually saying. I can't tell). The Black Society Trilogy, however, is about the underground and undercurrents, something that may not seem all that different than Miike's larger oeuvre but which is covered through entirely different concerns. Alienation is the biggest aspect; dangerous self-destruction another. The characters in Ley Lines escape small-town bullying and rivalry to include themselves in something much larger, much more dangerous, and completely out of their ability to handle.Ley Lines pops up in essays and descriptions of Miike as one of his finer works, and I have to say I agree. At first I wasn't too taken by it because most of it is under-exposed and dark and it took a while to build. However, both of course were the point: I'ven't seen a Miike movie take its time to build like this since Audition, and the cinematography is a sickly saturated primary color scheme that foreshadows Miike's later Big Bang Love, Juvenile A. Big Bang Love, Juvenile A gets compared to Lars Van Trier from time to time, and if that's the case, I'd compare Ley Lines to a Michael Haneke movie: each scene is built off of a particular, isolated pastiche.--PolarisDiB

jtourbro Ley Lines is the third installment in the Triad Society trilogy, and like the others this is a (almost) serious film. It revolves around a group of outsiders (sound familiar?) trying to survive in the rough Osaka neighborhood. The movie has a very nostalgic atmosphere and since it revolves around the yakuza world, there are a couple of "Miike-highlights" in this one, however without compromising the atmosphere or tone of the film. So like Shinjuku Triad Society this one is sort of a mix between the serious and insane, and a great movie to boot.8/10