Kensuke Hagane (Tsuyoshi Ujiki) is a quiet and somewhat naïve man, and a new recruit with the local Yakuza. His motivation for joining is the senior Tosa who with his impressive dragon tattoos sprawling across his back and his dignified and stoic demeanour is a great inspiration to him. A chance meeting between the two results in Hagane being entrusted with his senior's wallet, and he is awestruck to be given such responsibility. That night however Tosa brutally murders a rival Yakuza and is sent to prison, the Yakuza's girlfriend a horrified witness. Years pass and Hagne proves to be a thoroughly useless Yakuza, incapable of even extorting protection money from an old mechanic, run off by the man's wife instead. His big brother relegates him to cleaning the toilets, his girl rejects him, and then the humiliation continues as he is set upon by a gang of youths that night and is beaten despite his weak Yakuza posturing. There seems to be some hope however, as Tosa is due to be released from prison and he is chosen to be his driver. Things have changed though and the former rival Yakuza clans have formed an alliance, the soon-to-be-released senior murdered the former head of one of the clans and is a threat to the influence of his own brothers. Hagane and Tosa arrive at their destination but it's a set up. Tosa is gunned down attempting to save the hapless Ken, but they are both gunned down.

Hagane awakes. He is in a dark, unfamiliar room. He seems to be intact, but he keeps making odd whirring noises when he moves. Disoriented and not knowing what has happened to him he throws on an old overcoat and leaves on a handy bicycle. Things are not as they once were though, as Hagane effortlessly pedals extremely quickly, losing control and vacating the bike, landing at the feet of the very gang of punks that beat him earlier. They attempt to have their way with him again but are quickly dispatched by their target's new found superior speed and strength. Not long after, rain starts and something happens to Hagane, he starts to crackle with electricity and loses control. In this weakened state he is found by an extremely eccentric scientist who takes him back to his lab and explains to him what has happened. After Hagane and his Yakuza brother were killed, their bodies were sold on the black market and ended up in this PVC-jump suited chap's possession. This is no longer plain old wimpy, incompetent Hagane, but he has been rebuilt using parts not only from his body, but also from his boss. The heart of his idol now beats in his own chest, as well as his amazing tattooed back and his, er, terrifyingly large sexual organ. His creator wishes to make him a superhero and to erase all emotions from his brain but Hagane can only think of his idol and his Yakuza oath of loyalty. Finally, Ken may have the strength he'd need to take revenge.

Take your average violent Yakuza revenge story, throw in a sprinkling of Robocop, and you might have a vague idea of what Full Metal Yakuza is all about. A straight to video production in Japan, is shows that this extremely prolific director has no problem approaching a wide variety of different projects of varying style and budget. Just comparing this to Rainy Dog of the same year, a slow-paced, gloomy character study, it is clear that Miike is not a director that wishes to be pigeonholed or limited and that he has achieved this so effectively is admirable. After a vaguely Takeshi Kitano-esque introduction and we've seen our hero and his Yakuza brother are brutally gunned down the film veers wildly between quirky and surreal humour and visceral action with only a brief pause before the blood soaked climax. As mentioned above, many aspects of this film could be from any average Yakuza story as the young inexperienced raw recruit is forced to grow up and the death of his role model leading him to become the embodiment of true Yakuza loyalty and violence. However, turn the guy into the cyborg and make his transition to Super Yakuza a little less smooth and things take an unexpected turn. Tsuyoshi Ijiki provides an impressive portrayal of Hagane, a man who could not be less suited to being a Yakuza thrust into a situation where he is not only dogged with the memory of his idol Tosa being killed, but also his superior's attempts to save him from death, not to mention that he is permanently connected to the man through the appropriation of his limbs and organs. Even as the film goes on and Ken is hardened by his experiences, he still acts as a man who is trying to replicate the Yakuza he has seen on TV rather than having the understanding and ability within himself to fulfil that role. That the gruff voice he adopts when confronting the Yakuza is not much different from the one that he attempted to intimidate the street punks early in the film is one illustration of this. It is only his near-invulnerability and drive for revenge which pushes him on, one cannot say that he has become a 'real' Yakuza by the end. Despite his robotic augmentation, this seems somewhat more realistic however and is greatly aided by Ijiki's jittery and at times very pained performance. The parallels between Ken and Tosa are well-done too, particularly the transposing of Tosa's murdering of a rival with our protagonist going through a similar scene later in the film.

Even with these added nuances, Miike still goes against the grain with the tone of the film, injecting a lot of somewhat silly comedy into the mix along with the grandiose violence. Such out of the blue humour includes the crazy doctor's grafting of Tosa's enormous (and heavily pixelated) manhood, and the ridiculous defensive stance taught to Ken to protect him from bullets. This stance is of particular amusement as it is used to break the tension in a couple of action sequences where Ken, having a gun pointed at him, jumps to one side with his front arm kept straight down his body while the other hand shields the side of his face. He then shuffles sideways in tiny steps while his attackers look on in confusion, even more entertaining is how effective it is. This quirky humour offsets the po-faced violence effectively and it just seems so like Miike to show blood spurting violence one minute and having us laugh the next minute, a technique later honed to perfection in Ichi the Killer. The violence has flashes of his later opus too, except obviously done for a much smaller budget but all the more 'old school' for it. While not professionally choreographed, the violence is well shot and very raw, especially when Hagane acquires a razor sharp katana and metes out his revenge in bloody carnage much like Tosa did early in the film. There are some outstanding touches here, such as one senior Yakuza being decapitated by our hero before he head is kicked across town to the doorstep of the next set of henchmen who are to feel the cold, hard steel. One part I must take issue with however is the treatment of one female character who meets a horrific end while being cruelly tortured and raped by the villains and is further defiled after death. While I welcomed the changes of pace that came from the humorous aspects of the film, this turn was difficult to watch and served little purpose, and it does make one question Miike's attitudes towards women judging by what happens in a number of his films. That left a bad taste in the mouth which made viewing the rest of the movie less enjoyable.

While probably not a film that will appeal to all and not a good introduction to Miike, it is an enjoyable twist to the Yakuza genre that shows that the sort of variety he is capable of. The rape scene is a harsh blemish on what is otherwise a solid and entertaining movie that has enough quirks to enjoy for those whose tastes go well off the beaten track. Probably not one for Miike virgins though.

A whiney and wussy Yakuza, Kensuke member is escorting his boss, Tousa, when they get ambushed and shot to pieces. Kensuke wakes up to find a crazy doctor has created a full metal body for him... but had to use Tousa's heart (and unusually large penis). The doctor wants Kensuke to be a superhero, only doing good... but Kensuke wants revenge. So, he goes off to get it. It's not called "Full Metal Yakuza" because he's a superhero.

Every single element of this movie screamed "cheap". It was shot on video, the special effects were super low-budget, and the full metal costume looked like a full plastic mold. It was lame. I suppose what Miike did with a small budget wasn't bad, but it was just painful to watch in some parts (and not just because of Miike's obsession with necrophilia, which makes another appearance in FMY).

My biggest problem with the movie was the character of Kensuke. He went from wussy and annoying, to unstoppable and annoying. It was obvious that this was the where Miike first got his idea for Ichi, because the two movies have a lot in common (though, FMY is less shocking and less bloody). If he weren't quite such a lame character to begin with, or became a cooler character later, it would have been far more bearable.

If you're interested in checking out Miike movies (and have never seen any, yet), this is not the one you want to start off with. It's just not that good a movie. It had very few redeeming features.