Miike's 'Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo' TIFF Review: Funniest of Three — SkimNews
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- Takashi Miike world-premiered Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo at the Toronto Film Festival, produced by the late Jeremy Thomas — their partnership dating back to 13 Assassins — and distributed by Neon, with a 1 hr 48 mins runtime.
- Shun Oguri stars as Lieutenant Yabuki, a corrupt cop juggling a dozen rackets (mob kickbacks, drugs, gambling) whose knowledge of the real-life Seiryu-kai yakuza gang keeps him employed despite colleagues' wariness.
- Lily James plays Gwen, an FBI agent on a classified mission to locate a politician's missing daughter — a plotline the review says brings an unexpected 'Basic Instinct-style erotic-thriller element' that proves integral to Yabuki's downfall.
- The plot centers on freed Seiryu-kai member Ishizuka (Shotaro Mamiya) hunting revenge, opening with his estranged wife chopped into bits and molded into meatballs left for crows in a 'sky burial.'
- The review calls Miike's entry 'the lightest of the three' in the franchise — violent but light on gore compared to Ferrara's grim Keitel original and Herzog's Nicolas Cage spectacle, with Oguri landing as 'Columbo on meth.'
- Lily James is singled out as the weak link: the review says she lacks the 'girl-boss sass' the role demands, though she delivers a 'terrific bar-room brawl' and the English-language sequences expose a low sound mix.
- Miike is described as 'arguably the hardest-working man in show business,' with the film serving as a reminder he 'makes good movies with the same speed that he makes bad ones.'
Why it matters: By handing the Bad Lieutenant franchise to prolific Japanese genre specialist Miike, Neon positions a yakuza-inflected riff on a cult American property as a TIFF Special Presentation — and the review suggests the gamble pays off as a character-driven, jet-black comedy rather than another gore showcase, even if its James-led English-language beats don't fully land.
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