Shinjuku Triad Society

I watched Shinjuku Triad Society and it’s one of Takashi Miike’s early films that shows exactly what kind of director he was becoming. Bold, extreme, and completely unafraid to push boundaries. The story follows Detective Tatsuhito Kiriya, a violent cop trying to take down a Taiwanese gang involved in organ trafficking. Things get messy when he finds out his own brother works for them.

This movie is brutal. Everyone is corrupt, from the cops to the gangsters. Miike doesn’t let you get comfortable for even a second. The violence is raw and disturbing, sometimes crossing into sexual brutality that’s genuinely hard to watch. These scenes aren’t there for shock value alone. They show you how broken and cruel this world really is. The whole film has this dirty look with dark streets and smoky clubs that fits the tone perfectly.

What makes it interesting is the strange energy running through everything. Miike mixes serious crime drama with moments that feel almost absurd. You can see his style forming here with the fast pacing, sudden tone shifts, and characters living on the edge of madness. There’s even this twisted humor that pops up at weird times, making the whole thing unpredictable.

Kippei Shiina is great as Tatsuhito. He’s not a hero at all. He’s violent, unstable, and crosses every moral line, but you sense he’s fighting for something personal buried under all that rage. Tomorowo Taguchi plays Wang with this calm, scary charisma. The two feel like mirror images of each other, both outsiders consumed by power and guilt.

The film isn’t as polished as Miike’s later work, but his signature style is already there. Shinjuku Triad Society is grim, violent, and sometimes really hard to watch. But it’s also gripping in its own rough way. It’s about corruption, family, and survival in a world where nobody is clean. You don’t really enjoy it, you endure it. But by the end, you can see the wild genius Miike would become.