Izo is an assassin in the service of a Tosa lord and Imperial supporter. After killing dozens of the Shogun's men, Izo is captured and crucified. Instead of being extinguished, his rage propels him through the space-time continuum to present-day Tokyo. Here Izo transforms himself into a new, improved killing machine.
Kazuya Nakayama Kaori Momoi Ryuhei Matsuda Hiroki Matsukata Ryôsuke Miki Masumi Okada Hiroshi Katsuno Masato Bob Sapp Takeshi Kitano Daijirô Harada Yuya Uchida Taisaku Akino Chisato Amate Takeshi Caesar Mickey Curtis Ken'ichi Endô Ryuji Harada Yoshio Harada Renji Ishibashi Yudai Ishiyama Tsurutaro Kataoka Kirin Kiki Shigeo Kobayashi Miyuki Komagata Kazuhiro Mashiko Yasukaze Motomiya Hiroyuki Nagato Mari Nakayama Show All…
Izo: The World Can Never Be Changed, Izô: Kaosu mataha fujôri no kijin, Изо, 以蔵, Izo - The world can never be changed, 以藏, 이조, IZO-以蔵-
Japan
Czechia
Filmasia Film Festival
Italy
Canada
South Korea
USA
Canada
Czechia
Italy
Japan
South Korea
USA
I guess I’m in the minority here, but I loved whatever this was.
Granted, narratively and logically makes very little to no sense. Like all I can tell you, this was a very visceral, brutal, gory, horror samurai film about a demon-looking (or at least teethed) bro who takes down whoever crosses his way, kids included. Again, it's bloody, AF. Kitano makes a brief appearance, and the fact that Miike is directing Kitano alone should be reason enough to check it out! I particularly enjoyed the body horror elements. Nakayama’s performance is, for sure, something. But yeah, he delivers on everything he was tasked to do. Izo’s look is pretty dope, very minimalist but effective in…
Man, Takashi Miike is one crazy mf.
Izo may be director Takashi Miike's deepest and best film to date. Miike's body of work encompasses everything from children's films to cheesy horror flicks, but he is at his bloody best when he goes completely off the rails and Izo is, if nothing else, so completely off the rails that it was likely never on the track to begin with. That's not to say that there is no substance here, everything in this film oozes with symbolism and metaphor.
As Izo rages against the human species and the disappointing world we have created (or, within the context of the story, allowed to be created for us), the film itself does so in kind. Izo transcends being simply entertainment and…
First let me say this... I love Takashi Miike's films!
BUT...
IZO is too SCHIZO!
I'm sure in his own country this was a highly controversial film so Kudos to him for sticking it to the aristocrats! I garnered from this film all that I was able and it simply was not my cup of tea!
It was so torturous to watch I contemplated committing hari-kari by disemboweling myself with Takashi Miike's razor sharp wit!
Takashi Miike's Unnameable. Aesthetically terminal as few other films truly are, kill scene after kill scene unfurl as we crawl deeper and deeper into the gaping red cunt of the murder demon's incestuous goddess mother. Perhaps this film is about nationalism, perhaps it is about cinema, perhaps it is about sex repulsion, or death, immortality, sin, something, anything, but whatever message may exist is forcibly torn out like so many intestines by Izo, his sword, his fangs, blood red, gore clotted. Dead forever, forever dreaming, a severed head exhales butterflies.
Holy Mother of God... what did I stumble upon, what is this Tartarean darkness, this sorrow, this rage!!?
I can't possibly wrap my head around it at the moment (it will take probably another viewing or two), but this is grand, and wild, and calamitous in all the ways that matter to my soul.
"Even demons are drunk on nights like this." Izo Okada - the most notorious hitokiri (man-slayer) of the Bakumatsu period - reimagined as some sort of transuranic element decaying into the cosmos; an unworldly entity pitting the anger of the world against the pillars holding it together. A Nemesis, unborn in nature, released to eradicate nature's foundations and order in all existing realms.
Kazuya Nakayama is…
This really won't be everyone's cup of tea, and I can't say that I completely understood all of it.
It's chock full of religious symbolism, from the start it hits you right in the face with it. But then it seems it kinda take a manga adaptation turn which kinda lost me for a little bit.
I'm also probably wrong, the movie felt to be life-death-rebirth on repeat as Izo moved from Era to Era trying to hold god to account for the misery and pain that has befallen him. It's gets very dark towards the end with Izo losing himself but also very much like "what the Hell is happening". Rewatches could add a better viewing experience and I'll be perfectly honest, it's seems full of Eastern Philosophies that I'm completely ignorant to.
Like I said, nor for everyone but the pain that is conveyed throughout and the trauma, it pulled my attention back into it.
a character towards the end loudly declares Izo will burn in hell forever, not realising we’ve just spent the past hour and 45 minutes watching him slowly wade through cyclical hell like an RPG dungeon with no potions
Takashi Miike is without a doubt the most workaholic director living, having now 100+ feature films to his name and having anywhere from two to seven films/projects of his premiere within a single year. The years between '99 to '07 share not only some of his most well-known work (Audition, Ichi the Killer), but also when his intense work methods showed their most creativity, switching from bizarre experiments to yakuza films to even fantasy films kids can enjoy. Izo falls into the "bizarre experiment" camp, and is now only my second film of his I've experienced (the first, The Guys from Paradise, notable solely for being the last film I watched before consistently writing reviews). It certainly lives up to…
With direction from masterful filmmaker Takashi Miike, music by idiosyncratic singer-songwriter Kazuki Tomokawa, and featuring some of the most celebrated Japanese pop-culture characters like that of ex-American-wrestler Bob Sapp and the hugely influential filmmaker/actor Takeshi Kitano there is no real distinct possibility for failure, and indeed, failure this film is not. As much genius poetry as it is artful action film, IZO is a film that gives you a rich taste of contemporary philosophy and some of the greatest in avant-garde folk music available, while simultaneously executing flawless action sequences and beautiful art direction. A culmination of genius from modern Japan!
S.D.G.
C.V.R.
Quite literally dreamlike in the sense that the sequence of events presented in the film have almost no connection whatsoever to a typical “plot” or even to each other at times. Feels literally unreal that a human being made this. Thoroughly enjoyable but impossible to numerically assess.
A renowned assassin in life (this film appears to start at end of Hideo Gosha's 1969 film Tenchu, based on the same historical figure), in death Izo becomes the Absurdist hero, the living embodiment of uncompromising rage at the callous cruelty of the world's ruling class, its oppressive and immutable cycles, and all social institutions they codified (Real Estate? Marriage? Education? Law? Honor? All dead.), transforming into an indictment of all of humanity for passively protecting these institutions of power and repression because people just want to live their lives.
Izo is Sisyphus, and his boulder is the cosmic disappointment that is human civilization. Underrated.
