"What the fuck did I just watch?!” was my immediate response when the throng of Yakuza Apocalypse's closing credits began to roll. To be fair, that's a common response when dealing with the batshit films of prolific director, Takashi Miike, who has probably completed two or three films in the time taken to write this review. With his incredible output the general quality of his movies is hit-or-miss, but he's best the less he's restricted by the bounds of logic and good sense. Yakuza Apocalypse may not be Miike's best film, and lord knows he'll try to top it ten times over, but it's the only one to feature a kung-fu frog monster destroyer of worlds.
No really, there's a kung-fu frog monster
destroyer of worlds at the center of Yakuza
Apocalypse, but...well...it's also wearing a plush costume. Why? Probably
best not to ask because clearly Miike and screenwriter Yoshitaka
Yamaguchi's were in some kind of drug-induced mania when coming up with this
one. The result is like being detached from reality and sent to that same genre
nether-region where a film like R100 exists; if any of it makes sense
to you then perhaps a rubber room and straight jacket are in your future.
The plot is absurd in the best kind of
way. There's a Yakuza boss (Rirî Furankî) who just can't seem to be killed. We
know this from the scores of bullets he takes before chopping down his foes.
He's loved by his men and seen as a Robin Hood-type by the townspeople. He
lives by a strict moral code, refusing to use guns or harm any civilians. His
closest confidante is young Kageyama (Hayato Ichihara), who is a wimp compared
to the other gangsters. As close as they are, Kageyama doesn't know the boss' secret
that he's actually a long-lived vampire, and one of the few ways to kill him is
decapitation. Unfortunately, that's exactly what happens when a foe dressed
like an Old West priest, and TheRaid's Yayan Ruhian, dressed as a dorky tourist no less; jump him in a
back alley. After the boss gets his head twisted off his shoulders like a bottle
cap, he still has enough to bite Kageyama and turn him into a vampire, too.
Super incredible Yakuza vampire strength GO!!!
It's up to Kageyama to get revenge, but
first he has to get control of the blood thirst...which never really happens.
He starts biting the crap out of everybody, turning them into his own personal
yakuza vampire army. But wait...there's also some monstrous invincible creature
looming that everyone is terrified of. How'd he learn about it? Well, y'see
there's this underground sewing in a noodle shop run by a guy who has a fetish
for stomping on feet and...this is actually the tamest thing about Yakuza Apocalypse. 
Perhaps that's the biggest problem facing
the film as there is simply too much absurdity crowded into a limited space.
Granted, at over two hours long there's nothing limited about the run time, but
the crazy amounts of bloodshed and goofball antics leave little room for
anything else. We only get a few moments of Kageyama coping with his
transformation, although the brief scene we get is powerful. Miike briefly
touches on the blood-sucking nature of the Yakuza and organized crime in
general, and one of the more insane subplots involves the actual growing of
human beings just to have people to extort. This effort is led by the new
Yakuza boss who, for some inexplicable reason, has some strange white fluid in
her ear like water from the beach. 
There's just too much chaos to go around,
and enjoyment will depend on how willing you are to embrace it. While there are
plenty of big laughs, blood, and gunplay to go around, the film's
well-choreographed hand-to-hand brawls are stellar. And yes, this includes the
showdown with the aforementioned kung-fu frog monster destroyer of worlds who
is like an amphibian Bruce Lee. And of course, any time you have Yayan Ruhian
kicking ass its worth checking out. That guy is phenomenal, even when dressed
like a total spaz. Yakuza Apocalypse doesn't make a lick of sense, but if
you're willing to get detached from reality for a while this is a different way to
do it.
Rating: 3 out of 5
