{"id":2904,"date":"2009-08-17T19:35:47","date_gmt":"2009-08-17T23:35:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=2904"},"modified":"2015-10-02T15:20:26","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T20:20:26","slug":"detective-story-2007-takashi-miike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/2904","title":{"rendered":"Detective Story (2007, Takashi Miike)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Opens with reclusive white bearded artist Yuki Aoyama making <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/9422\">Hellraiser<\/a><\/em>-inspired artworks which will pop up throughout the movie.  Then we&#8217;ve gotta introduce our mismatched couple: two next-door neighbors named Raita.  R. Kazama (Kazuya Nakayama, <em>Izo<\/em> himself) is a detective who, despite some slapstick scenes and his retro wardrobe, is no <a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/2302\">Maiku Hama<\/a>.  R. Takashima (Kuroudo Maki of Kitano&#8217;s <em>Brother<\/em>) is an upright office worker who doesn&#8217;t really want to know his imposing neighbor.  Tak is the straight man who gets pulled into an investigation, contributing his mad hacker skills and acting as a center for the film (I don&#8217;t know why the more fun detective Kaz couldn&#8217;t have been our center).  Tak never unpacks after moving in &#8211; I can&#8217;t figure if he&#8217;s joking when he tells Kaz that he won&#8217;t stay long since moving is his hobby.<\/p>\n<p><em>Detective Raita:<\/em><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image09\/detectivestory2.jpg\" alt=\"image\"><\/p>\n<p><em>Salaryman Raita:<\/em><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image09\/detectivestory1.jpg\" alt=\"image\"><\/p>\n<p>Our detective&#8217;s employees are young dude Masakuni (who turns out to be the bad guy; spoiler alert) and Girl Whose Name I Didn&#8217;t Catch (played by Harumi Inoue of Miike&#8217;s <em>Graveyard of Honor<\/em> and star of <em>Freeze Me<\/em>).  The mystery involves girls showing up horribly killed with some new agey earth-wind-fire metaphor business, each missing a different internal organ.  The one thing they&#8217;ve all got in common: they insulted famous artist Aoyama in front of detective Masakuni, who is not only the artist&#8217;s secret son but has killed the artist and taken his place using blood and organs mixed with his paint.<\/p>\n<p><em>Art:<\/em><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image09\/detectivestory5.jpg\" alt=\"image\"><\/p>\n<p><em>Artist:<\/em><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image09\/detectivestory7.jpg\" alt=\"image\"><\/p>\n<p>Before all that comes to light, we have to sidetrack into a giant <em>Silence of the Lambs<\/em> ripoff, with detective Kaz visiting a horribly burned isolation-cell prisoner whom he once locked up, asking the prisoner for psychological advice.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image09\/detectivestory6.jpg\" alt=\"image\"><\/p>\n<p>Miike tries to keep it fun &#8211; jump-cuts all over, two (two!) peeing jokes and a hilarious final line (&#8220;My fingers grew back!&#8221;) and Koji Endo contributes nice saxy music.  Supposedly everyone knew this would be a bad, throwaway Miike movie because it was produced by the guy behind the reputably poor <em>Silver<\/em> and <em>Family<\/em>&#8230; but he also wrote <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/2533\">Big Bang Love<\/a><\/em> so how bad could the guy be?  This seemed about on par with <em>One Missed Call<\/em> &#8211; throwaway, yes, but not outright bad&#8230; a fun genre flick with no higher calling.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image09\/detectivestory3.jpg\" alt=\"image\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Opens with reclusive white bearded artist Yuki Aoyama making Hellraiser-inspired artworks which will pop up throughout the movie. Then we&#8217;ve gotta introduce our mismatched couple: two next-door neighbors named Raita. R. Kazama (Kazuya Nakayama, Izo himself) is a detective who, despite some slapstick scenes and his retro wardrobe, is no Maiku Hama. R. Takashima (Kuroudo [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[36,302,104],"class_list":["post-2904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-japan","tag-painting","tag-takashi-miike"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2904"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10380,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2904\/revisions\/10380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}