Rainy Dog

As with many Takashi Miike films, Rainy Dog centres around a character completely wrapped up in his own delusions and therefore incapable of reacting spontaneously. Rather than respond to events as they are happening, Show Aikawa's Yuuji continues muddling along a path he has predetermined in his own mind; unshakably acting out his idea of how an embattled hitman should behave when they have outlived their usefulness. Set in Taiwan during monsoon season, Yuuji is trapped by the incessant rain. Soaked through, he huddles in his mouldering apartment watching tiny, heavily compressed clips of Daiei monster movies. When the downpour does let up, Yuuji strides around town in billowing funereal whites, blowing holes through minor mob bosses. The casualness of his violence is striking in terms of how utterly unconcerned Yuuji is about repercussion. This particular Taipei neighbourhood is not, it seems, beholden to any form of law enforcement. People, not just Yuuji, kill with such impunity that the act has become a particularly ugly form of street theatre. 

Yuuji is a Japanese criminal - excommunicated from his organised crime syndicate, we learn - living abroad and, essentially, collecting scraps from the local gangs. His Taiwanese employers talk up their familial affection for Yuuji but, naturally, they see him only as a useful but expendable asset. Early in the film Yuuji's door is kicked in by a furious ex, who quickly reveals that not only is this hitman a father but a deadbeat one at that. Child firmly abandoned, the woman flees in a taxi, screaming at her driver for daring to question her trajectory away from this sodden hell. Yuuji doesn't so much take this development in his stride as not acknowledge that anything in his life has even changed. The child, a mute boy played by Jianqin He, follows his father around like a lost animal, quivering in the elements and feeding himself from bins while Dad stalks rival mobsters or visits a brothel. This strange (un)familial bond - in which a father does exactly what he likes even though he has a dependent in tow - is reminiscent of the one seen in the Lone Wolf and Cub films. By updating the relationship to the modern day, and stripping out all the ceremony associated with the suicidal moral codes of an uprooted samurai, Miike has hit upon a profoundly selfish expression of masculinity and fatherhood, one that sees trembling children as axis (or even distraction) when enacting your own, personal, Gotterdammerung.