Could it be possible that the man known for his bizarro cinema like Happiness of the Katakuri's, Fudoh, Dead or Alive: Final, Gozu, and Visitor Q had one-upped himself? Well, he certainly comes close.

Samurai Izo Okada (Kazuya Nakayama) is instructed by his revolutionary leaning lord, Hanpeida, to go on a killing spree. Izo does as he is told and is captured and crucified for his actions. But Izo's spirit will not rest and he becomes a conundrum within the fabric of the universe. Separated from all sense of space and time, Izo wanders across the world and the beyond, cutting a path of destruction, intent on destroying... well, everything, any man, god, spirit, or entity that enters his path.

That is basically it. Izo is a sort of Terminator-Billy Pilgrim, a being of pure destruction with a grudge against all that exists who is dislodged in time and space. He falls into an Edo era setting where a group of SWAT-geared soldiers machine gun him. A band of samurai soldiers chase him through the neon streets of modern Tokyo. He comes across imps disguised as insurance salesman, abbots, a voluptuous mother Earth figure, 60's era youth gangs, ex-lovers, other wandering swordsman spirits, zombie WW2 soldiers, a fragment of his own soul, businessmen, families, yakuza, and a sort of council of the universe made up of a Chairman, Aristocrat, Scholar, Financier, and a General. No one is spared. As Izo degenerates with each killing, he is reduced to a more demonic state.

Izo is repetitious. Pretty much, the film is made up of Izo dropping into some time and place and hacking away at whoever's there, meanwhile the god-like counsel sits and frets over what they are going to do with this unstoppable irrationality running around, and every, now and then, Japanese folk legend Kazuki Tomokawa sings a number that adds an emotional exclamation point to a scene. The repetition seems to be the point- violent actions just have the same result, no matter the time, the place, or person, destruction is ultimately fruitless. This is punctuated by a scene where Izo has all but run out of people to fight and cut down, reduced to a slobbering, monosyllabic demon, literally running like a hamster inside a huge infinity symbol floating on some celestial plane of existence. At two hours and eight minutes, it does feel overlong, and one justified complaint is that the film could be easily sheered of a couple of scenes and be twenty minutes shorter.

One of the oft quoted labels I kept seeing associated with the film was that it is pretentious. Okay that is fair, but not really in the most negative connotations of the term. It is showy, what with its epic length, all star cameos, and splashy direction, but it is also very straightforward and clearly is not aiming at any severe high mindedness. I guess audiences were confused because of the non-narrative structure, lack of a fleshed out character thread, and how it was clearly patterned to be as an esoteric mindfuck. The philosophy is actually pretty simple, so I guess maybe the typical cinema audience thought it was a head-scratcher because it lacked a traditional cinematic three act, here's your hero milieui.

Basically, Takashi Miike has delivered a film that is a sort of cross between a Terou Iishi bloody horror action exploitation and Alejandro Jodorowsky surreal epic. With scriptwriter/co-collaborator Shigenori Takechi (the two previously worked together on Agitator, Graveyard of Honor, Deadly Outlaw Rekka, and Yakuza Demon), Miike indulges his more experimental side, which seems to be his current career projection, balancing his output between pure commercial fare and more "out there" work.

Like the film or not, Miike and the producers made this project go from a direct to video film to an all star, festival contender. The cameos are a who's who of Japanese film, Kaori Momoi, Ryhuei Matsuda, Tsurataro Kataoka, Yuya Uchida, Hiroyuki Nagato, Hiroyuki Matsukata, Mickey Curtis, Ken Ogata, and the Beat man himself, Takeshi Kitano. And, just for good measure, you've also got beloved athletic beast and K-1 freakshow Bob Sapp.

I think the film definitely has its faults, the primary one being its length. Miike is one of cinemas most twisted and often violent filmmakers, but Izo is basically an anti-violence film. Not surprising, actually, since Miike has also delivered some very gentle films and making violent films doesn't mean you condone violence. I found much to like. There are many jaw droppingly stylized scenes that will stick with you. There is a great bit where Izo tumbles into a wedding, filmed upside down, and then careens into a middle school where a chorus of schoolgirls confront him. In a forest, a genuinely gentle moment occurs when Izo's soul-fragment, Saya, cradles and exhausted Izo, carefully picking nits out of his hair. And, I had a good laugh at some Miike-ish humor: when Izo confronts the council, the scared academic figure nervously offers Izo an honorary degree of Doctor of Interfering with Everything in the Universe. And, I even thought the Kazuki Tomokawa numbers were pretty cool.

Conclusion: A hack-and-slash art film. This is the kind of flick that I think will potentially bore and probably baffle most moviegoers. Hell, even though I like it, it is the kind of film that I could rewatch five years from now and have a totally opposite reaction. So, suffice to say, viewer beware. Most folks will want to give it a rental. But, for lovers of the odd and peculiar, and Miike, if it sounds appealing, give it a shot.

Izo takes from history its title character, Izo Okada (Kazuya Nakayama), a 19th-century swordsman recruited by his sensei Hanpeida Takechi (Ryosuke Miki) to be an assassin for the nationalists, who were loyal to the Emperor. In Hitokiri (1969), Shintaro Katsu portrays him as arrogant and self-destructive. Izo was eventually caught by his enemies and sentenced to torture and death. This is where Miike's film starts.

After a painful and bloody death by spears and crucifixion, Izo awakens in present-day Tokyo and becomes an angry spirit of undying flesh and blood who wages a one-man campaign of wholesale slaughter on Japan by the edge of his sword. As representatives of the nation, including Beat Takeshi as the Prime Minister, nervously discuss how to deal with this closing threat, an array of warriors from across time are recruited to stop him. Miike uses this device to allow Izo to smash through one genre stereotype after another as he cuts down knife-wielding salesmen with fangs, gun and bat totting-yakuza, samurai assassins, a police SWAT team, and an enormous black warrior monk played by mixed martial arts and pro wrestling celebrity Bob Sapp. Izo's killing rage spares no one in his path, including women, children, priests, and even his own mother. In the process of bringing down his own hateful judgment upon the Japanese people, Izo gradually transforms into a blood-soaked demon until he finally faces the choice between an eternal cycle of violence or spiritual rebirth.

Izo is an easy movie to get lost and confused in. Miike appears determined to make a strong political and social statement through the context of swordplay violence, but in a most bizarre way that keeps the viewer questioning nearly everything they see. The most obvious gimmick Miike uses is visual and narrative abstraction. He has shown a taste for nonsensical imagery and situations in past films, but never to this degree. Izo's sinking to the bottom of a lake in the past becomes a horizontal fall through a wedding party in the present day. At least this can be explained within the context of the story since we know Izo is a spirit who has stepped out of the time continuum. But in another scene Beat Takeshi has a weighty conversation with a costar and both appear to be reading from scripts in their hands. In a similar acknowledgement of the "stage," Ryuhei Matsuda appears to walk between sets in preparation for a final encounter with Izo. Much of this appears to be used for no other reason that to shake things up visually. Case in point is an interesting, but otherwise insubstantial scene where Izo finds himself fighting modern police in an Edo-period village and then fighting Edo-period police in a modern city.

The most consist example of Miike's art cinema approach is the presence of Japanese folk singer Tomokawa Kazuki as a guitar-strumming and singing observer. He acts as a link between Izo's hatred of the war-mongering society that created him and Japan's real-world conflict between prideful nationalism and the left. This is part of the film's larger message against war and violence, that is grossly overstated by additional imagery and weakened by Miike's overindulgences. Kazuki sings and strums too much, Kazuya Nakayama cuts down a few too many people and the wartime references including lots of archival footage and zombie soldiers become tedious and over-the-top.

There's also a questionable suggestion that the symbolic Emperor represents some kind of Buddha-like figure, who is above reproach for the crimes of his country's cabinet leaders. Through Izo, Miike pisses on the hypocrisy of religion, government, the military, business, family, and the individual, but stops short of an androgynous boy-emperor (Ryuhei Matsuda) with breath strong enough to take out a demon. This must be a joke. I sense that Takaski Miike is more intent on having subversive fun with Izo than with trying to make any grandiose philosophical statements as some critics have suggested.

In a way, Izo is a big playground for Miike to accomplish two things; throw an indestructible samurai swordsman up against every conceivable opponent including himself and to unleash enough swordplay violence for ten samurai movies, seemingly to make up for lost time or pent up ideas in need of expression. Izo cuts his way through a lot of people, victim and skilled adversary alike. Powered with unearthly ability, he slices through opponents' swords and bodies with ease and ends up repeatedly stabbed, cut, shot, and perforated without lasting effect. None of his opponents are his equal, although he's cut down several times and left for dead. More than anything else in the film, this has me perplexed. Why would he allow himself to be cut down by some samurai, while he kills others easily? It's a weak argument, but perhaps Izo is showing restraint in the face of true samurai spirit. Such spirit isn't defined in the movie, however.

The swordplay itself is well executed for the most part, with limited wirework use and lots of direct and brutal slashing to emphasize Izo's directness. Kazuya Nakayama makes a great action lead, particularly for this role. His compact, muscular frame, steady moves and frequent war hollers help to sell his character as an unstoppable force. Miike relies on squishy sound effects, blood gushes, some CGI, and intentionally disorienting shooting and editing to add complimentary excitement. The computer-generated gore is reminiscent of Beat Takeshi's Zatoichi (2003) and looks cheesy. The general killing spree starts to get a little monotonous past the half way point, but Miike peppers the film with a number of fun fights. Nakayama's bout with Bob Sapp has a mild fighting video game or anime vibe to it. Unfortunately, there isn't enough of this type of sparing engagement throughout to really satisfy fans of screen fighting, which should not be confused with screen slaughter.

I'm a Miike fan and found Izo to be in keeping with his style, even though he took elements of his filmmaking to artistic extremes. From my point of view it's self-indulgent, live-action anime, with no real agenda beyond slicing up chanbara convention and cranking up the violence meter. The more cerebral aspects of the movie are sometimes thought provoking, but despite all the artsy affectations, I'd say no more so than Ryuhei Kitamura's mainstream supernatural actioner Sky High (2003). It's too bad that Miike doesn't know when to stop though. Had he cut out about 30 minutes or so and focused his themes a little more, this could have been his best yet.