The Mole Song - Final

No flinching: here comes the unfettered concluding instalment of the manic yakuza trilogy that only Takashi Miike can deliver.

The pre-eminent bad-boy-turned-living-legend of Japanese cinema returns to MIFF with the final entry in his Mole Song trilogy (Hong Kong Capriccio, MIFF 2017; Undercover Agent Reiji, MIFF 2014), adapted from the long-running manga by Takahashi Noboru. Can undercover cop Reiji (a rubber-faced, slickly suave Toma Ikuta) – the series’ bumbling and put-upon unlikely hero – put a halt to the importing of the culinary-narcotic product ‘speed-a-roni’ from Sicily and finally put the boss of the Sukiya-kai gang behind bars?

The marquee name of Miike, the world’s most zealously prolific maker of unclassifiable genre romps, practically guarantees a crowd-pleasing good time. Replete with insane fights, inventively tasteless bodily harm, gaudy get-ups, the destruction of opulent sets and even a rap musical number performed (to Reiji’s horror) by his colleagues on the Tokyo police force, The Mole Song – Final more than matches the raucous heights of the director’s wildest work.

“A perfect ending … It’s all goofy as hell, Miike knows it, and he fully embraces it.” – Screen Anarchy