Did Onibi live up to my expectations? Yes, and then some. The best way to describe Onibi is a cross between a Takeshi Kitano and a Takashi Miike film.

Yoshio Harada (Party 7/Azumi) the lead actor plays a character Kunihiro that is very similar to Beat Kitano's in his films. The main difference here is Yoshio actually puts in some acting effort beyond grimacing, giggling and trying to look cool the whole time. That last line may come off sounding like I don't like Beat's films or performances but in actuality I love them as much as the next fanboy. Just my observation.

The Takashi Miike part I associate it with due to the similar themes of suavely dressed yakuza parading around while one character is one of the last true yakuza in his ways. The director of Onibi actually gives some depth and explanation to this in a running theme throughout of yakuza nowadays always being greedy and avoiding conflict if it will save them money.

Well what's it about? The main character Kuni (Yoshio Harada) has been released from prison after a long stretch and shortly after is greeted by old yakuza buddy Tanigawa (Sho Aikawa). He is more then welcome back in to the yakuza by Tanigawa but would like to try to go straight. Of course we all know how this goes and by the end of the movie you will have literally wound up back were you started.

Sounds pretty generic? Indeed and Onibi's main strength much like Takashi Miike's films is to take a cookie-cutter generic paycheck of a movie and turn it in to something more.

The acting is the real strength of this film. Yoshio Harada just makes me a bigger and bigger fan with every new performance of his I see. Sho Aikawa is in his usual splendidly charismatic mode and gets a decent amount of screen time. The female lead does an especially superb job. Kazuki Kitamura (Azumi/Ley Lines) also has a nice little part as a blatant flaming homosexual that was Kuni's old cellmate.

It's a shame this movie doesn't have a decent subtitled release [at the time of this writing] outside of a pretty good ebay version that pops up from time to time. If you manage to track it down, buy it!