Gozu (Gokudô kyôfu dai-gekijô: Gozu) poster & wallpaper

Sho Aikawa, Hideki Sone, Kimika Yoshino

Minami, a member of the Azamawari crew, highly respects his Aniki (brother) Ozaki who has saved his life in the past. However, lately Ozaki's eccentricities (like claiming that a Chihuahua hs sees is ...( read more  read more... )a 'Yakuza attack dog') have been making everyone wonder about his sanity. Chairman Azamawari is unsympathetic to Ozaki's little outbursts and secretly orders Minami to take Ozaki to a disposal facility in the city of Nagoya. There, the fate of these two follows a twisted path filled with violence, mother's milk, strange locals, and ultimately the disappearance of Ozaki's corpse which Minami now desperately tries to recover.

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82% liked it

7,265 ratings

Critics

71% liked it

52 critics

R, 2 hrs. 9 min.

Directed by: Takashi Miike

Release Date: May 17, 2003

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DVD Release Date: November 23, 2004

Stats: 668 reviews

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Flixster Reviews (668)

  • DragonEyeMorrison
    April 18, 2009
    DragonEyeMorrison
    Miike shows how skillfull and inventive he can be with Gozu, a bizarre hybrid of horror and yakuza flicks. This is not a "japanese lynch flick" it's a very unique beast that deserves it's own adjectives.
  • FangsFirst
    April 8, 2009
    FangsFirst
    I've seen two Takashi Miike films before (Audition and Ichi the Killer), plus his episode of Masters of Horror ("Imprint") so I picked this one up because it was on sale--and it was Miike. I can't recall what I heard, though I definitely heard it was one of M...( read more)iike's films to be seen, so when the person I was watching a movie with today excitedly pointed out the previously half-watched (by her, not me) Gozu, I shrugged and didn't know what to expect--except that nothing would be offlimits as usual, which I threw out as a casual warning (it was shrugged at then later justified).

    Minami (Hideki Sone) is sort of an assistant to Yakuza man Ozaki (Sho Aikawa), who we learn is a little...off at their meeting with the Azamawari crew Yakuza boss (Renji Ishibashi), where he insists that he's joking, but proceeds to tell the boss that the toy poodle outside is a trained Yakuza-killing attack dog and proceeds to slam it repeatedly into hard, flat surfaces until he has sufficiently killed it (presumably to death). We soon find Ozaki and Minami on the road to Nagoya, when an unassuming, terribly plain car appears behind them, and with a bolt of fear and slammed-on brakes, Ozaki leaps to defend the two of them from what he maintains is a Yakuza-killing car, retooled specifically for this purpose. He walks up with a gun to the plain-looking, frozen smile of the woman inside, only to be stopped with a body block by Minami, who somehow knocks Ozaki out in the process. Receiving a call from their boss, Minami confirms that he is indeed taking Ozaki to "the dump" near Nagoya--until the road to said town suddenly ends at a river, leading to more rapid braking, seemingly killing Ozaki. Minami stops for coffee after discovering his mentor's corpse, only to look outside and find it missing. Now the quest really begins, as Minami must find the missing body and get it to the dump, all the while following the ridiculous and circular directions of the people of Nagoya, who are all just a bit off, it seems, having incessant phone conversations about the same banal subject--but without even variance in how it's discussed. An innkeeper (Keiko Tomita) comes onto him in a bizarre fashion--offering to wash his back and, uh, if you can believe it, offering him milk--fresh, and not from a cow.

    Depending on how you read what I've just written, it either sounds like a Troma movie or a David Lynch movie. No, I take it back--obviously there's too much subtle plotting for a Troma production (and where would the stock footage of the exploding car ramping off another car go?!), but the truth is that it's both anyway. It has a lunatic sense of humour, a visceral edge, a dreamlike quality and an essential incomprehensibility. As I've said many times before, I am NOT a fan of most of David Lynch's films. I find them tiresomely obscure and distractingly pretentious, and usually ploddingly slow AND uninvolving, an absolute death knell for the derivation of entertainment of any kind to me. The difference here is that, despite similar qualities (inexplicable logic of character change, disappearance, reappearance, surreal elements), those elements are all carried off as if this is a world in which such things can happen--not that anyone, especially Minami, expects them to, but they simply can. More importantly though, there's that Tromatic tongue-in-cheek feeling, with some elements of grossness seeming to have no plot importance, existing purely for the amusement of Miike's aesthetics. Here again, though, that rampant vulgarity is taken through a slightly more serious lens, not zoomed in on or shown in all gory details (it's not done with silhouettes or only suggested, but it's not pornographically obvious)--in some ways it has that matter-of-fact eye turned toward it, even as a ladle protrudes from a man's rectum--not as some goofy martial arts finishing move or violent slapstick gag, but for his sexual pleasure.

    More importantly--for me at least--Minami is someone we can get behind. We're told he's Yakuza, but when an intended seance turns randomly into inexplicably violent sibling abuse, he backs up to a wall and pleads, frightened, for the abuser to stop. It's ridiculous, mind you, and not just a horrifying instance of this violence, so a sardonic smile is elicited by the scene despite the action within it. We can see that despite the fact that he's a gangster, essentially, he is well-meaning--even informs us in conversation with bizarre guide Nose (Shohei Hino) that he has never killed anyone. In essence, these differences make for an experience like a Lynch film...but enjoyable. Many suggest that Miike was influenced by Lynch, but I can hear his words,the way he talks about just making what he wants or feels is right--and that's what you can see in his movies. He plays around, does what he thinks fits, doesn't think about taboos, going too far, not going far enough or anything else most think of--if the obscure becomes clear, he shrugs and it's simply clear now. When you see ridiculous violence, it seems to just occur, rather than being a set up just so we can have some nice gory effects here or there. It makes for a more entertaining experience than movies that aim for obscure meaning or violent/pornographic setpieces with flimsy plot surrounding them. It can come out a weird mix, a glop that may not even seem to fit together quite right--though this time it does--but we can see the guiding hand of Miike putting all those parts where they are, even if they are not where we expect them.
  • Saxia
    August 24, 2008
    Saxia
    One of the strangest movies I've ever seen, a bit slow sometimes. I liked the dialogue -pretty weird- it requires a special taste haha. It's pretty sick too.
  • Stinger839
    August 15, 2008
    Stinger839
    Builds to a great ending. a bit too obsessed with lactation. This is best described as a surrealistic thriller. As usual, Miike makes a list of extreme activities and mashes them together to make grotesquefest. Not as nasty as Visitor Q. Too slowly paced, but some full characters...( read more) and obviously fantastic visuals.

    "So Fucked Up" highlight
    the conclusion, and the way in which "Soup Ladle Yakuza Boss" dies
  • BloodyKitten
    July 24, 2008
    BloodyKitten
    A very bizarre film that you have to see simply to form an opinion on. Drags in some places, but overall very good.
  • mktsbakr69
    October 29, 2009
    mktsbakr69
    This movie is eight kinds of messed up. Definitely surreal. Great though. I'll never forget it!
  • annubis44
    October 15, 2009
    annubis44
    This surreal, adbsurdist, nightmare/comedy from director Takashi Miike can only be described as Miike does Lynch, a fact Miike himself admits to freely. At turns both freaky, and hilarious, Miike manages to craft a superb cinematic dreamscape featuring many yakuza genre stalwarts...( read more). The film is sublimely fucked up from beginning to end, and one of Miike's best.
  • jonnydaddy
    October 14, 2009
    jonnydaddy
    Miike at his best! Weird!
  • actsoftheunspeakable
    October 5, 2009
    actsoftheunspeakable
    I am a huge fan of anything to do with Takashi Miike, so I was very excited to see this film. Not knowing what to expect, I bought Gozu on dvd. My first reaction: "this movie isn't that wierd"...half an hour later "Jesus Christ! what the hell?". This has got to be one of the m...( read more)ost bizarre movies in existance. A very entertaining watch...Absolute genius, if a little messed up. Highly reccomended to anybody.
  • k2emmaw16
    September 24, 2009
    k2emmaw16
    al principio hay una escena donde matan un perrito, jajajaj esta super maniatica

View All Gozu (Gokudô kyôfu dai-gekijô: Gozu) Reviews

Critic Reviews

September 23, 2004
Colin Covert, The Minneapolis Star Tribune

Plays like the rantings of a madman, but a pretty entertaining madman. full review

August 13, 2004
Ty Burr, Boston Globe

Not your average midnight movie but something more hermetic. full review

July 29, 2004
A.O. Scott, The New York Times

For Mr. Miike's fans, it will be an indispensable compendium of outtakes and sketches. For others, it will be a mystifying and provocative introduction to his unnerving, wanton and prodigious imaginat... full review

View more Gozu (Gokudô kyôfu dai-gekijô: Gozu) reviews at RottenTomatoes.com

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