Rainy Dog

Rainy Dog is the second film in Takashi Miike's Black Society Trilogy. However, the three films (Shinjuku Triad, Rainy Dog, and Ley Lines) apparently don't have much to do with each other from what I have read, since this is the only film from the trilogy I've seen so far (Ley Lines has also gotten a lot of good press). That being said, Mark Schilling, a film critic for The Japan Times, gave it high marks in his book, Contemporary Japanese Film, which was one of the reasons I decided to watch the film. Of course,  I have previously seen some films by the director, Takashi Miike, before. He is famous for some over the top films; he is responsible for like Ichi The Killer. Dead Or Alive, and Audition, among the hundreds of films that he has directed. In fact, it is one of four films he shot in 1997! It is not characteristic of the previous films I mentioned, because it doesn't have any of the graphic sex and violence that is associated with Miike and the earlier films. Several reviewers have pointed out that this film seems to channel Takeshi Kitano in pace and themes. This can be seen in the deliberate pace, music, and restraint seem to call to mind certain Kitano films. There's an informative commentary from Tom Mees, one of the authors of the Midnight Eye Guide To Contemporary Japanese Film.