Joanna Mccarty Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Adeel Hail Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Hayleigh Joseph This is ultimately a movie about the very bad things that can happen when we don't address our unease, when we just try to brush it off, whether that's to fit in or to preserve our self-image.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

kluseba Dead or Alive: Final is the third and last instalment in Takashi Miike's Dead or Alive trilogy. The only point this film has in common with its predecessors are the facts that all films are directed by Takashi Miike and feature Japanese V-cinema cult actors Show Aikawa and Riki Takeuchi in the lead roles. Dead or Alive: Final isn't even a classic gangster movie but rather a dystopian science-fiction movie. It's not as quirky, explicit and brutal as the first instalment of the trilogy but more vivid, surprising and experimental than the second movie. Considering the long list of characters and balanced mixture between the first two instalments, it makes me think of Takashi Miike's third part of the Black Society trilogy where Ley Lines had a very similar approach if compared to its predecessors Shinjuku Triad Society and Rainy Dog.The story line is quite unusual, even by Takashi Miike's experimental standards. The movie is set in the year 2346 in Yokohama where people of several cultures coexist. The movie's dialogues are in Cantonese, English and Japanese but different people seem to understand one another effortlessly despite speaking different languages which proves that society has become very educated, multicultural and polyglot. However, after numerous violent wars in the past, Yokohama's mayor has established radical birth control to prevent further conflicts. It has actually become illegal to give birth to children and homosexuality is praised as a political and social ideology. People are forced to take pills to suppress their desire to have sexual intercourse and give birth to children. Those who disobey are hunted down. Riki Takeuchi plays a cop that is hunting down social outcast living in hiding to have families. Show Aikawa plays a human-like robot who gets in touch with one of these communities by pure coincidence after saving a young kid that gets attacked in front of him in a restaurant. The two characters end up fighting each other but soon realize that they have more things in common than they would have thought.Among the movie's strengths, one has to note a quite quirky and surprising story line that ends in a very surprising way such as the first part of the trilogy. The acting performances by Show Aikawa and Riki Takeuchi are outstanding and they have great chemistry on screen. The supporting actors are also doing a great job. Richard Chung convinces particularly as manipulative gay mayor and Josie Ho shines as female rebel that has to find a sense of life after most members of her clan got betrayed and assassinated. The settings of the film are often abandoned, broken and dirty which is typical for Takashi Miike's movies and give this film a slightly gloomy atmosphere. The sky is mostly yellow-brownish which adds an interesting tone as well. The movie is obviously inspired by several dystopian science-fiction stories. The pills that suppress the will to reproduce could make you think of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 while the presence of robots is closely inspired by Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. Movies such as Blade Runner and The Matrix seem to have influenced parts of the script as well. On the other side, Takashi Miike's movie isn't a cheap copy of these well-known stories and he manages to add his own touch to it thanks to the great acting performances, quirky story line and quite vivid action sequences filmed by local Hong Kong choreographers.The most negative element of the film is that it rarely looks futuristic. You can still see old cars, cell phones from the early millennium and simplistic weapons that seem out of place in the twenty-fourth century. While the action sequences look great, the special effects are very artificial and look as if they were taken from an old manga. The movie would be more convincing if it took place in the near future than in the twenty-fourth century.In the end, each of the three instalments of Takashi Miike's Dead or Alive trilogy complements one another perfectly and shows the diversified skills of its director and main actors. It's a matter of taste whether you prefer a fast-paced and brutal gangster thriller, a thoughtful drama or a vivid science-fiction movie. I liked all these movies but I would probably prefer the first for its intensity, put this third film in second place for its quirky creativity and might put the second movie last because of its minor lengths in the middle section. Still, fans of Japanese cinema should be familiar with the entire trilogy and purchase the excellent boxed set by Arrow Video and also try to buy Arrow Video's boxed set of Takashi Kiike's Black Society trilogy.

gavin6942 The ace cop of a totalitarian police force and a drifting android play their parts in a post-apocalyptic society. They are destined to fight. Their encounter will change them forever.What we have here is Miike going full-on Miike, letting his absurd vision overtake any attempt at a rational film. Some may appreciate that. For me, other than that funky saxophone player, I find it to be a waste of just about everyone's time. The film is rife with references to "Blade Runner", "The Matrix", "Brave New World" and others -- sometimes not so subtle. And although this is allegedly the 2300s, no attempt is made to make it look anything different from the year 2000. Which means, watching it in 2017, it already seems silly and dated.Tom Mes sums up his thoughts on the movie by saying it is "too much of an in-joke and not enough of a fully developed film." Deferring to the master, I would have to agree. Miike pumped out many video releases over the years, and continues to do so. Because of his prolific activity, some of the movies come out half-baked. This is one of them. Really for the die-hard fan only.Although Arrow Video had Tom Mes record commentary for all three "Black Society" films and the first "Dead or Alive", he mysteriously does not provide commentary on parts two and three of "Dead or Alive". In fact, the special features seem to be primarily focused on the first film, which is a bit of a shame (even if we can all agree it is the most iconic of the series).

MisterWhiplash Dead or Alive: Final, the movie that supposedly brings together the three films in the very loose Dead or Alive trilogy, and connected mostly by its stars, Riki Takeiuchi and Sho Aikawa and that each film has its share of bizarro-world fixtures and neuroses and heaps of violence, is admittedly the weakest of the lot. That none of the three films ends up being a disappointment is less a testament to the creativity of the material but to the pound-for-pound guts that director Takashi Miike takes with the surroundings and the material. Here he presents an overtly dystopian future, however low-key, where a homosexual mayor/dictator (Richard Chen) has the entire village drugged except for a group of rebels. There's also replicants- robots- in this year of 2346, one of them is Ryo (Aikawa), a robot of complete lethal skill but also with the capacity to love and learn and so forth. Then a cop, Takeshi (Takeiuchi) happens to be the mayor's top guard. But things start to unravel on both sides, Ryo teaming up with the rebels and Takeshi with his employer, though blood-soaked mishaps like a hostage trade-off gone bad, and with Takeshi finding out his wife and son are robots (not done in an Alien mood, mind you, just suddenly as if in a the power went out), and that he himself is one as well. And it all leads up to one last, inexplicable showdown between the two men.Strange that there's yet another film where Miike has peaks and valleys here, sometimes finding that middle ground of success where science fiction can have some meaning to it. But there really isn't anything to take from this story, except that the mayor/dictator is a dingbat with no back-story who gets his rocks off making sure his drug stops couples from getting pregnant and that everything remains under control. He also has along with him his love slave, I'd guess, in the hilarious non-speaking part of a saxophone player who also doubles sometimes as a human fixture when not plugging away the moody blues. Meanwhile, we get the conventional sides to Ryo and Takeshi's stories, and they're never uninteresting, just not totally convincing enough to hold interest. Of course Miike isn't above having some fun, like when Takeshi plops Michelle (Maria Chen) in to the water to get her to swim after a near-assassination attempt on the mayor, or in having the original rebel leader speaking English for no good reason at all. There's even a playful homage to old sci-fi cartoons at the start of the film. But there's nothing very compelling substance-wise, with the exception of Takeshi's minor turns at becoming "good" midway through the film (helping one couple get by with clearance to have a kid), and mostly Miike's strengths this time are purely stylistically and in the choice of locations and sets.It's like a grungy Japanese Alphaville where everything still has a contemporary feel through all of the special effects. And I really liked the yellow-green tint Miike used through the movie, as it impacted very well in outdoor scenes and added just enough grittiness in the indoor scenes. But as for peaks and valleys, one sees this ever more clearly- and the sci-fi movie channel level of visual effects, with maybe a few more dollars put into it- during the climax. This contains some of the funniest material in the most delirious, Freudian sensibility from the director, even if it has to get started by unbearable contrivance; the way that Ryo and Takeshi finally meet up is sort of random and just a means for the producers to try and cheaply tie together the past two films, when it wasn't needed. On the other hand, in terms of the sheer guilty entertainment value of a flick like Miike's where one sees something totally unexpected and very crudely sexual, it ranks right up there with the best scenes in Happiness of the Katakuris and Visitor Q. Overall, Dead or Alive: Final is a cheesy 90 minute effort that doesn't take itself TOO seriously, and is better off all the more for its wicked contrivances, militaristic decay and cultural hang-ups put on pulp-level display.

C-M-Will This is a film that has to be taken in context. It shouldn't be seen unless you've seen the first two films, but the sort of people seeing this film will probably own the box set, or at least know someone who does. And you shouldn't go in expecting Blade Runner; the films budget doesn't stretch quite that far, and it's a far more zany ride.Essentially the film is a science fiction set in future Yokohama (shot in Hong Kong as is obvious) about a society where it's illegal to procreate. Sho Aikawa reprises a similar role from Dead or Alive 2 and Riki Takeuchi is a detective for the birth control cops. Takashi Miike isn't one to give all of his reasons to you on a platter, but one can assume that the law on procreation (enforced by giving people the pill) is there because of over population, increased life spans and so forth. Interestingly the dialogue in the film is mainly Cantonese, whilst Sho and Riki (who play their parts, as always, brilliantly) speak Japanese, and a few speak English. People have criticised the English as being wooden, but I found no problems with it. Also, another person found the homosexuality themes throughout the film to be offensive; said that Takashi Miike was anti-homosexual. He may very well be (and not all artists have to be left-wing), but I can't see this film as an insult to homosexuals. He merely calls back philosophies of ancient Greece when homo or bisexuality was more common. The film contains similar proportions of action-packed and poignant moments to DoA 2, although in this film the action is more martial-arts based, and are done in a very good Hong Kong style. The cinematography in the film is very nice on the eyes, with symmetrical shots, a good control on colours to give the air a polluted look, and it's nice to see uncut, lengthy shots that are so rare in Hollywood these days. Basically, there's a lot to like in this film: a good sense of humour, exciting action and some very beautiful moments. It's a great finish to the series. You could criticise it for being a bit cheesy, but isn't that part of the charm?