AllMovie

With his reputation for taboo-smashing weirdness, mayhem, and shockingly grotesque violence, it would seem that the last thing Takashi Miike could be accused of being is boring. This final installment of his Dead or Alive trilogy proves, however, that his frequent inability to keep a story going between action scenes is, in fact, his biggest flaw. To be sure, Audition, his most notorious film, kept up excruciating tension between scenes of vomit-inducing nastiness, but even the acclaimed first Dead or Alive film sagged between its mind-blowing opening and closing sequences. It could be that Miike, who works at a furious pace of up to seven films a year, simply stretches himself too thin. His problem with pacing is more apparent than ever in Dead or Alive: Final. Miike sets the adversaries of the first two films, battle replicant Ryo and pompadour-coiffed cop Honda, in a futuristic Yokohama that owes a bit too much to Blade Runner (it even has a slow-flying futuristic blimp) and is presided over by a clichéd, preeningly decadent homosexual mayor. With Final, Miike crafts a limp tale of rebellion that anticlimaxes in a final showdown between the heroes that is hardly befitting the final battle of a three-film series. Even the effects in this film are tired. Ryo's bullet-stopping ability, for instance, is straight out of The Matrix. Clearly, Miike is diluting his talent with his incredibly prolific output. The good news is that, for Miike fans, there are many more, and better, films to choose from.