REVIEW - SHIELD OF STRAW

This world turns not for law, order, justice, right and wrong. It turns for money - 1 billion yen, exactly. And how easy it becomes for a mob of 120 million then to unite against a vile murderer of children, and seek some form of societal retribution for a crime that they'll never understand. Kiyomaru is a marvellously despicable creation, except that no-one sought to invest some sanity in his insanity, and he becomes a blithering psychopath versus a country teeming with them. Miike Takashi ought not to give the police officers in his film such credence at even their ugliest moments - he presents them as the last bastions of sense and reason in a world gone mad for money, and even then, they're still more fallible than they'd have you think. He loosens the reins for the odd splash of stylistic hysteria here and there, gesturing toward a touch of absurdity that might have befitted this outlandish film, which makes deft use of an intriguing high-concept premise before it stutters to a halt. What Miike excels at is sustaining tension, with threats to each and all parties and from each and all directions throughout, and he only lets up for a few misjudged, but most characteristic, streaks of maudlin psychological posturing. Cut all this, and all the attempts at grand spectacle (respectably managed) out, and Miike could have himself a unique and excellent thriller, but he's enjoying himself far too much to attend to such artsy-fartsy concerns. The cheap, deafening screech of second-rate sound effects, the distasteful inclusion of a female character only honorable because of her broad rejection of conventional codes of femininity... Shield of Straw is a rotten old mess of a B-movie, but what other sort of B-movie could you possibly wish for?