DEAD OR ALIVE 2: BIRDS encompasses robot-turtles, an unattractive (at first) title, gore, angel wings, prophetic swarms of birds, the juxtaposition of beautiful, calm scenes of home-town pleasance with the images of gangsters' gun fights. Directed by the great Takashi Miike, BIRDS is a film about violence, and the way that violence pervades from childhood to adulthood. Two men, Mizuki and Shuuichi have grown up from childhood friends to big-city contract killers. Each is unaware of the other's presence within their realm, but one day on a similar hit, they cross paths. Seeing in each other a violence that was desired at childhood and was never fully formed, the men return to their home-town, seeing a third friend who went down a more conventional path, and vestiges of the things they half-understood as children. Their sexuality is especially explored: the men notice the wife of their third friend to be one of the girls they hung around with as children at the same time as they noticed their burgeoning sexuality. Violence is not integral to the third friend's life, and yet the presence of Mizuki and Shuuichi pushes it into that life. The men, killers, remark that by killing one jerk for $30,000 they could save the lives of a hundred thousand children by administering them 30 cent vaccinations. Their violence becomes justified, and yet their line of work forbids a happy ending. Wings sprout from their back, prophetic birds swoop through buildings. DEAD OR ALIVE 2: BIRDS is one of the greatest films obliquely about everything and anything: repurposing images, tones, and emotions.
Dead or Alive 2: Birds: ★★★★
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