Osaka Tough Guys Review
With a string of period-set, Osaka based films – most notably the Young Thugs films and The Way To Fight – Japanese cult director Takashi Miike showed off his sensitive side. Yes, those films had their share of violence and humor but more than anything they were loving homages to the time period and circumstances the director himself grew up in. With Osaka Tough Guys Miike proves that nothing, not even his own sense of nostalgia, is sacred to the man. Osaka Tough Guys is an absurdly funny piss-take on the scenarios that drive his other Osaka films; a violent, vulgar slapstick laced with vomit, breasts and frilly ladies undergarments.
The film begins with Eiji and Makoto, a pair of thuggish high schoolers, staggering ragingly drunk into an alley so that Eiji can unburden his stomach of its contents, a recurrent theme for Eiji in the early going. As Eiji wretches a teenage girl is chased into the alley by a gang of would be rapists from a rival school and our drunken heroes intervene to save her and we are introduced to Keiko, the would-be love of Makoto's life.
So far the film is actually fairly in keeping with Miike's other Osaka films. But then we meet Mr. Daimon, a brutish, heavily scarred, camouflage clad yakuza goon who has clearly watched far too many Riki Takeuchi films. He is large, powerful, and absolutely terrified of the insanely made up, heavy set woman pursuing him with robotic obsession, insisting on marrying him.
Following an expulsion, an extortion, a million yen party in a hostess bar, a memorable fight pitting Makoto with a pair of forks against a man with a samurai sword, and more vomit from Eiji, our duo answer a help wanted ad and are forcibly recruited into the same yakuza gang that employs Daimon. The yakuza life is hard, they are told. You must work hard! “Yakuza policies are one – training! Two – training! Three and four – training! And five – dick! Brush up on your manhood!” Of course the pair have hooked up with the most incompetent yakuza gang in history. When not washing the boss' car they make attempts at insurance fraud, fail miserably at collecting debts, and don woman's underwear to sell to celebrity fetishists.
As films go Osaka Tough Guys is less a cohesive story than it is a series of sketches. It plays in the broadest terms possible with all the characters other than Makoto functioning purely as two dimensional walking jokes. It is safe to say that Osaka Tough Guys lacks the depth of Miike's best work but it is also frequently laugh out loud funny. From the fork fight to Makoto and Eiji singing songs in praise of their morning glory Miike jams the film with absurd humor and his trademark visual inventiveness. And just as the joke begins to grow stale he introduces a legitimate human element, dipping into the blossoming relationship between Makoto and Keiko. In the grand scheme of things Osaka Tough Guys stands as a relatively minor film in Miike's canon, it is however a mightily entertaining one.
