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“By 2001 A.D., capitalistic countries have privatized all government organizations. Prisons, like car parks, have become franchised businesses.”
Quite a dystopian way to begin a movie, wouldn't you say?
Ricky Ho Lik Wong (Fan Siu-Wong), 21 years old, has been sentenced to ten years in prison for manslaughter. We know little about him at first (because that’s how movies work) except that he is an orphan, a former music student, and mysteriously disappeared for two years prior to his arrest. A x-ray scan indicates that he he has six bullets lodged within his chest that he has refused to remove for some reason. Ricky is clearly an (androgynous) man of many mysteries, and also what looks like a slight uni-brow. We don’t judge.
The prison, as can be gathered from the intro, is a horrible place, more a encampment for slaves than an institution for rehabilitation. It’s run by the equally-as-mysterious-as-Ricky-if-not-more-so Warden and his vice-warden Dan, a sadistic, snobbish, one-eyed, hook-handed bastard with a fondness for general dickery. Their rule is maintained by the Gang of Four, prisoners who are leaders of the four wings of the prison. There’s Oscar, the tattooed leader of the North Wing, Brandon the blond, needle throwing leader of the South, Tarzan, the burly leader of the East, and Rogan (Yukari Oshima), the leader of the West, overall leader of the Go4, and the most androgynous man in the film. For the (relatively) innocent prisoners, horrible death is commonplace, and misery is omnipresent. If only, they surely think, there were some kind of super badass martial artist around who wasn't a total dick. They could totally take out those 4 assholes and two superior assholes, and prison could be fun and exciting again! Except for the shower rape, of course.
As it turns out, Ricky is a super badass martial artist, and he’s not a dick at all. With a mastery of the secret/ancient art of Qidong and a hatred for injustice so intense that the average superhero feels inadequate by comparison, Ricky is one man against an army of truncheons and guns and fists. The army better start writing up their wills, if you know what I'm sayin'...
So ‘the lone martial artist fighting against injustice’ is not what you may call a unique plotline, seeing as it and ‘lone martial artist seeks revenge for the death of master/loved one’ comprise 90% of all martial arts film plots, so what is it that sets Riki-Oh apart from its peers? Gore. Riki-Oh is easily the most over-the-top violent martial arts movie that I have ever seen, and the extent to which these special effects are utilized remind me more of The Evil Dead or Re-Animator than Return of the Dragon or The Drunken Master. People don’t just get punched in the head, skulls are pounded in from the sheer impact of the fist, blades don’t just cut, they rip through flesh like a hot katana through butter, etc. Almost every single fight, hell, even physical interactions between characters is a explosion of blood and viscera just waiting to happen, and often does. Which sounds like it would get old, but Riki-Oh springs it on you in such unexpected ways, at the same building and building up the excess that you end up looking forward to how exactly folks are gonna get jacked up every time.
It’s fun for the whole family.
The excessive violence is obviously a part of what makes this film popular, but the part that drives it home is how stupid it is. Not bad stupid, of course, but pure undiluted camp, that lovely feeling that comes with people doing ridiculous things without a trace of self-awareness or irony. It’s what helps the violence turn from unsettling to hilariously cartoonish, because it’s being done by people who don’t see the question of physics that arise with a small Asian man that can karate chop human limbs off. Character development either doesn't exist or come out of nowhere, which doesn't really matter because the characters are so bizarre and exaggerated that it wouldn't really help things at all. Ricky’s backstory, which are presented in flashbacks, are such a model example of stupid things done seriously that it boggles the mind. The origin of the bullets in Ricky’s chest, which is given in the later half of the film, literally left me speechless in how ludicrously it was shown to us in the film. Eraserhead gave me a similar feeling of being unable to wrap my head around what I was seeing, but in that case it is intentionally being presented in a surrealist manner. Whereas here it was more like walking down the street and passing a woman who was walking a poodle, and that poodle was wearing trousers. No context, no warning, just a dog wearing pants for a split second and then it’s gone. That’s the easiest explanation I can come up with, which explains why I don’t explain things that often. Explain explain explain.
Perhaps all this campy violence can be justified by mentioning that this is in fact a comic book movie, or a manga movie for all you Japanophiles out there. Yes, Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky is based on a manga by the name of Riki-Oh, created by Saruwatari Tetsuya and Masahiko Takajo and published by Shueisha in the late 80s. Although perhaps excessive by modern standards, comics about ridiculously overpowered fighters killing random bastards by the truckload in a hyper-violent fashion was actually a market in that time. Buronson’s Fist of the North Star, Hagiwara’s Bastard!!, everything about the actual story could be bonkers, as long as you had some badass fight scenes and graphic death scenes. Which I guess makes Riki-Oh accurate to the tone of the original manga, but it means that you have human beings playing crazy characters that were likely even more crazy on paper, with storylines that were likely built up for months being condensed within a 90 minute film. Which is not an uncommon thing for comic book movies, most notably previous Thunderbird entry The Crow, but is the very same reason why it’s very hard to see a good comic book movie. The Crow is, like Riki-Oh, a comic book movie that tries serious and ends up camp, but as well as from the flaws I mentioned in that entry, the direction is skewed far too much in the boring lost love subplot, and less on the crazy atmosphere and action, that it ends up evening out to a C-grade at best. Riki-Oh is an almost nonsensical train wreck that wraps right around to success, and the eventual romantic doesn't distract from the fact that you’re seeing guys getting their eyeballs knocked out of their sockets. It’s a schizophrenic gumbo that you can’t help yourself from eating, even though your brain can’t make sense of it at all.
Yeah, I enjoyed it. If you love gore hound effects, cheesy action, grab some beer and a couple friends and spend a Friday evening with this film, and you won’t be disappointed. If you don’t have any friends, for whatever reason, you still might like this movie, but it sounds like you are probably more suited towards The Crow and leather pants. Also the music of the Smiths.
Morrissey knows your pain, middle-class white people. Morrissey knows your pain.
Result: Recommended
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