Izo

Almost defying description, lzo opens with found documentary footage about sperm - a classic Miike film ingredient - production in young males. Then it turns to a graphically violent recreation of the execution in 1865 of the 28-year-old lzo Okada, a low born samurai warrior and swordsman so talented he has earned the terrifying nickname of The Slaughterer, who served under the antiShogun rebel Takechi Hanpeita. His rage against his captors propels lzo's spirit through time to present day Tokyo, where he suddenly possesses the body of a bum in an alley of the financial districts. The reincarnated assassin
goes on a killing rampage through time and space, from the Warring States period to the day after tomorrow, slaughtering the authority figures who are the Shogun's spiritual heirs. Nothing can stop lzo - he is negation itself: the contradiction spewed up by ''the perfect system'' that is Japan.
Cult director Takashi Miike injects everything from slow torture to mass slaughter into his films. In this philosophical splatter gem, Miike leaps through time, space and logic, making a larger statement about the insanity and futility of violence, murder and war.

CHRISTO BURMAN

Medverkande
Takeshi Tikano,Ryuhei Matsuda,Kazuya Nakayama: Producent
Taizo Fukumaki: Manus
Shigenori Takechi: Foto
Nabuyuki Fukazawa: Musik
Koji Endo: Talat språk
Japanese