The Guys From Paradise (2000)

Director: Takashi Miike
Allegedly based on a number of true cases, The Guys From Paradise is a prison story set in the Phillipines against a background of corruption, drug trafficking and paedophilia. This being a Takashi Miike film however, the results are far from conventional. It’s essentially a film of two parts: the first set in a prison named “Paradise” where a small community of Japanese prisoners led by veteran criminal Yoshida (Tsutomu Yamazaki) enjoy a life of relative freedom and privilege, the second the story of their exploits outside prison walls with police and a deranged yakuza on their trail.

Central figure is Kohei Hayakawa (Koji Kikkawa), a promising young corporate upstart, sent to Paradise prison on a false charge of possession of heroin. Arriving in a suit and carrying a suitcase of his belongings as he makes his way through the dirty, overpopulated concrete corridors, he assumes his lawyer will have no problem getting him out. When the message arrives that the only thing that will make him a free man is bribe money rather than evidence of his innocence, Kohei realises his old life of luxury is over and slowly surrenders to his fate, becoming increasingly close with the community of Japanese prisoners he was adopted into upon his arrival. The group is soon expanded with the inclusion of a female member from the neighbouring women’s jail (played by Nene Otsuka), whose presence greatly attributes to Kohei’s decision to leave his fiancée and devote his life to the illicit dealings of his convict compatriates, all of whom seem to have adopted to their more primitive surroundings as a means of survival…

That director Takashi Miike is known in the west mostly for his ultraviolent shockfests and cartoonish yakuza flicks says more about western audiences (or distributors as the case may be) than the director. For every ICHI THE KILLER in his ouevre there is a BIRD PEOPLE IN CHINA and GUYS OF PARADISE is closer to the latter than the first. Neatly sandwiched between the comic-book absurdity of CITY OF LOST SOULS and the summer-afternoon nostalgia of DEAD OR ALIVE 2: BIRDS, the movie walks the proverbial tightrope between the absurd and the dramatic, mostly leaning towards the latter, with hearty doses of black comedy thrown in for good measure.

Following the misadventures of a timid Japanese business man in the Phillipines, arrested and thrown in prison for smuggling heroin where he starts dealing drugs for another inmate in cahoots with the prison warden, the movie stacks a series of tragicomic episodes of the appalling conditions of prison life, weaving together the lives of six Japanese inmates (the titular Guys from Paradise) as they bide their time in the hot, damp purgatory of Manila, dealing drugs, squabbling with each other and dodging the occasional hired assassin.

The tone is a bit inconsistent, as though Miike wants to make a poignant dramedy but in the same time can't help himself indulging his crazier side. Between a woman hiding jewelry in her nether parts, a yakuza boss merrily imbibing his bodily fluids, a man getting shot full of holes and still able to walk around for a couple of minutes and say "I love you" in broken English, the movie threatens to turn into FUDOH any moment.

Miike mostly succeeds in keeping a lid on all-out madness, while still managing to squeeze a handful of beautiful moments out of his material. Exchanging the frenetic editing of his yakuza flicks for a sombre approach and a slow-burn pace, Miike uses quirky editing tricks mixed with long static shots to mirror the two-pronged seriocomic nature of the movie, which is filmed in drab, washed-out tones but makes great use of the vivid Phillipinese locations. All in all, this is not quite the Miike casual viewers might expect, but longtime fans will appreciate this other, more contemplative side.

An IMDb Review

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