Too much of everything

Admirable film.

Absolutely Brilliant!

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

This film's storyline as explained in IMDb must be one of the most deceiving on the site. This is not an action film. This is not a sci-fi film. This film is the most boring piece of pseudo-philosophical politics I've seen in a long time. Hell, while watching, I've been several times tempted to press stop. It'd have been the first time in my life that I stopped watching a film out of boredom. Instead, I simply used double speed sometimes. I never did that before either. Now I reckon I only watched Miike's Audition and was interested in 13 Assassins. The whole Ichi The Killer praise didn't appeal to me. And, after watching this piece of rubbish, I may as well never watch another of this director's movies again. Miike tries to make this story peculiar and innovative by creating an abstract environment and plot. If you want a linear or a story that makes minimal sense, go somewhere else. This is pure experimentation. In this case, with horrible results. If you want to expose certain ideas about society, you don't need to make those ideas so obscure that only Japanese or deranged people can access them. This is NOT an enjoyable film. Interesringly, I had the same feeling with a couple of other Japanese films (thus my remark regarding being Japanese to understand it), but none of them bored me to death as this one did. Honestly, watch it at your own risk, or if you want to boast about how deep your knowledge of the absurd goes. Miike, never again.

This movie is kinda annoying to sit through. There isn't really a plot, so much as a theme. The title character Izo abstractly walks through time and space and movie sets propelled by his hatred at the unfair and seemingly purposeless hierarchy of the universe. There are funny and interesting moments (and social commentaries) but it's too long and meandering!I am kinda disappointed here. Izo presents a lot of cool ideas and premises. I'm pretty sure it's based on a Japanese work of fiction and that there is some older Japanese movie about the story of Izo before his crucifixion. But in making this incarnation of the story so abstract, Miike leaves the viewer kinda bored and frustrated. I understand that this is some "Pierrot Le Fou" type of flick, where the viewer is almost "interacting" with the movie, but I've never been a fan of that stuff. I kept feeling like Miike was laughing at me for watching his film.And indeed, many of the actors are cast as novelties to be ridiculed, including the lead role and MMA fighter Bob Sapp (funny that Kitano Takeshi appears in this, considering his movies all rule the roost!). This is blatantly discussed on the extras DVD, where Miike says a bunch of not-so-profound things about art and music. I think Miike really does get a kick out of manipulating people, is the thing. It's kinda creepy.The music sucks, since it's mostly this exploited (autistic?) folk singer Miike fawns over. And yet Miike has a real skill for scene composition. The cinematography here is fantastic! And so are the actors who are NOT being exploited. It's a weird interplay, not unlike some of Woody Allen's interesting moments. You know, a really great cast, contrasted against a handful of really pitiful, blatantly exploited bad actors who aren't in on the joke.By the way, don't watch this expecting a samurai film. The choreography and fighting is purposefully ugly and oafish. This movie is quite blatantly an anti-samurai film, which brings to light Miike's perspective on the subject. The anti-dogmatic stance of this film indicates a non-conservative stance of modern Japanese society. Beautiful cinematography and interesting ideas don't make up for the purposefully manipulative and abstract portions of the film. I guess I can respect that Miike was trying to do something artistic here, but it's simply not that enjoyable or cathartic to sit through.

Generally speaking, I am a fan of director Takashi Miike. His masterpiece "Audition" of 1999 is one of the very few brilliant Horror films from the 90s, and his repertoire includes quite a bunch of other great films. That being said, my feelings on "Izo" of 2004 are mixed. Miike is not exactly known for his conventional style of film-making, and "Izo" is indeed a film of unspeakable weirdness (which I like). The film, which is, as usual for Miike's films, very gory (even though actually not even quite as brutal as I expected it to be), basically consists of a vast number of gory battle sequences. These scenes of carnage are strung together with intervals of philosophical questions concerning life, politics and sociology. The film, which is more than imaginatively made with impressive and surreal settings, a perfect photography and astonishing effects, is brilliant in some aspects, and it has some moments that are downright ingenious. That being said, it sadly gets incredibly monotonous after a while and, as far as I am concerned, it is at least 30 minutes too long. In spite of its weirdness, "Izo" therefore regrettably evokes mainly one feeling: That of boredom.In 1865, the assassin Izo (Kazuya Nakayama), who stands in the service of Hanpeida, an Imperial supporter, is captured after having killed many of the Shogun's men. After being executed in a particularly cruel manner, Izo does not vanish, but his rage makes him return as a vengeful (semi-)ghost, traveling through the ages in order to get his revenge...As mentioned above, the film is very good in several aspects. It is immensely stylishly made, the carnage sequences are exceptional, the often surreal settings are more than impressive. In short: all the stylistic elements are superb, and I also liked the philosophical approaches. The performances are also good, Kazuya Nakayama is weird enough as Izo, and the supporting cast includes the great Takeshi Kitano. Inbetween, however, the film becomes overlong, sometimes almost insufferably boring, making it hard to sit through. Like everything by Miike, the film is a matter of personal taste; unlike many of his other films, this one didn't meet mine. Worth checking out for hardcore Miike-enthusiasts, but boring to sit through for everyone else.

Only Takashi Miike could make a film like that. This movie is very symbolic, and bizarre. Izo is story about an evil spirit, who once was an assassin, who travel trough time and realms, to avenge his death. Miike have expressed his feelings in a very unnatural way. The question is what is "Izo"?, there are many answers to the question, my personal opinion is that, Izo is the Japanese part of the second world war, and japan in war situation trough the history, and the cruelty of the human nature, he is the dark side of every person. Miike show you clues pretty clear in the movie. When he kills his first victim he ask him, are you so brutal because you are human or human because you are brutal?(cruelty of the human nature). He shows also how religion can be misused, in personal interest and how hypocritical it can be. In the scene where he kills his own mother is also an symbolic example, his mother says "killing me is like killing yourself Izo", when a population corrupts and destroy there country they destroy there own system...they destroy themselves. The whole thing start to make sense if we relate it to the second world war. In the beginning Izo looks like an ordinary person ,cool, but later on he becomes more fierce, he even kills children and innocent people, civilian people are those who suffer the most in a war. With other words the war from the Japanese side didn't look like bad thing, but later on they saw the cruelty of the war. In the end Izo do look like a monster, with a mask, evolution... changes of war how it changes in a negative way, mask is an accessory, just like the army used armored weapon in later wars.Izo is brilliant movie, I'm not saying that everyone going to like it, because entertainment for everyone does not exist. A must for Miike fans ;)