DEAD OR ALIVE 2: BIRDS

A pair of rival yakuza assassins turn out to be childhood friends. After a botched hit, they flee together to the island where they grew up, and decide to devote their deadly skills to a more humanitarian cause.

This requisite spiritual sequel to Miike’s apocalypse composes itself in a unique bifurcated structure of dark violence and evocative meditations of the past. Dead or Alive 2 throws out the gangster picture rulebook, and creates a new poetic surrealism for its bullet ballet. Takashi Miike forever.