Evengyny Thanks for the memories!

BlazeLime Strong and Moving!

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Freeman This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Polaris_DiB Okay, so it's basically a Japanese rip-off of Robocop with gore and weird Asian Extreme sentiments. It has a scene highly reminiscent of The Brain that Wouldn't Die and a plot line that can be seen in anything from Killing Machine to Machine Girl and all kinds of movies that have happened before and since. Yet still I dare you to watch this movie and say, "Yeah, I've seen it all before." Won't happen; Miike's too playful and too willing to go "there", "there" being just as far as you didn't think anyone would go before.So, simple plot synopsis: this guy Hagane is in the Yakuza, only he's an impotent fool and a coward and is only in his family because he greatly admires his "Brother" Tosa. But when Tosa gets gunned down and Our Intrepid Hero catches a few bullets in the process, a self-proclaimed Mad Scientist appears out of nowhere to recraft him out of metal, spare bits, and the heart, genitals, and tattoo of his hero. Fully equipped (on more levels than one), it's time for Hagane to wreck vengeance. And stuff.There are some pretty amusing scenes here. For the most part, this movie is kind of wonderful because it's a playful and action-filled male wish-fulfillment. He's nearly invincible, he gets to destroy stuff easily, and he gets a bigger penis. Of course, Miike isn't satisfied with only one emotion, and scenes range from hilarious to sentimental to disturbing, switching gears on a whim and always allowing an opportunity for silly facial expressions (the acting in this movie is great, by the way. Japanese actors have this wonderful way of stretching their faces).Funnily enough, the tone of Full Metal Yakuza fits closer to Zebraman than most of Miike's other work. Ultimately, it's playful and escapist by nature, which is not honestly what he does all that much. But whereas Zebraman can sort of kind of almost maybe be considered a children's movie (except for its strangeness and a couple sordid scenes), this is closer to Heavy Metal type escapism, fully adult entertainment and yet full of boyhood passion.--PolarisDiB

ResidentHazard Full Metal Yakuza (Full Metal Gokudô) 1997 Not RatedThis quaint little movie is one of the first by infamous Japanese director Takeshi Miike. A director known well in Japan for his work on Yakuza (Japanese Mafia) movies—but well known worldwide for his bizarre and shocking "horror" films. This is one of his unusual combination films. It's a Yakuza story, with elements of horror, science fiction, Mafia pictures, and Robocop. The story revolves around one of Japan's crappiest Yakuza underlings, who, of course, wishes he was more. The head of his, uh, "mafia gang" has taken a liking to him regardless of his grandiose incompetence. Eventually, both are killed, then rebuilt a la Robocop into: "Full Metal Yakuza!" That's right, they're rebuilt into one mostly robotic super-Yakuza warrior—that's primarily the mind and personality of the wimpy warrior. Complete with appetite for nuts-n-bolts dragging around his gigantic penis. Go ahead, reread that sentence. You read right. The new RoboYakuza eats hardware like nuts, bolts, screws, nails, what-have-you for energy. And, he has a huge wang. Well, anyway, he goes around fighting and killing people that were enemies to him and his Yakuza master before they were killed. So it's a revenge story, too. One with cheesy dialog, rampant violence, amusing characters, and laughably horrible special effects. Movies made for PBS don't often look this bad! But the film is decently fun to sit through, so long as you like cheesy Yakuza movies, constant violence, and Takeshi Miike. But keep in mind, this has exceedingly low production value, and is cheesier than Wisconsin. 5/10www.ResidentHazard.com

theP4ul well, i do like Japanese movies at all and i am not very often disturbed by the unique style of Japanese movies, but what is delivered here shocked me. i can't really explain, why exactly this movie p***ed me like that, but somehow nothing fits in full metal yakuza. well, the story is OK, but i cannot stand how it was brought on screen. perhaps an English language version of the movie is better, but unfortunately here in Germany only the uncut German version is available. so correct me if i am wrong, but i seen much better Japanese movies than this one.

David Austin Not all that entertaining, and very low budget, but flashes of Miike's wacky brilliance make this worth seeing for fans of his work. A wanna-be yakuza loser bumbles his way through the lower echelon unpleasantness of a gang, before a very unpleasant incident results in his being transformed into a deadly (if goofy-looking) cyborg fighting machine. Will he get revenge or will he just mope around like some whiner from a French movie and short-circuit in the rain?People familiar with Ichi will see a lot of the same elements (though Ichi does come from different source material). The protagonist of FMG is a proto-Ichi in many ways, full of angst and completely dysfunctional, stalking around in a plated body-suit and not much of a hero. Any serious pathos or plot development is undercut by the wacky joke bits Miike throws in (like our hero learning stances to deflect bullets). The silliness is definitely fun, but the movie is so schizophrenic that most of the enjoyment is of the "Whoa! Did that just happen?" variety. Dig in if you're a Miike fan, otherwise don't start here.