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Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

LEY LINES is the third and final part of an unconnected gangster trilogy by Takashi Miike, following on from SHINJUKU TRIAD SOCIETY and RAINY DOG. Once again the focus is on a youthful group of Chinese Triads, this time living in Japan and struggling to make ends meet. The film begins on a light and comic tone as the men mess around and have fun, but then they get involved with a criminal element and things turn deadly. I found this film to be pretty slow and unfocused, if I'm honest, lacking in the kind of basic characterisation that would make the lives of the characters we're watching interesting. Miike can't resist throwing in some perverse and explicit sexual elements but they add nothing to the overall quality of what is a largely lacklustre film.

Ley Lines is the third and last instalment in Takashi Miike's Black Society Trilogy that focuses on foreign gangsters with inner struggles trying to find a purpose in life. Ley Lines both shares similarities and differences with Shinjuku Triad Society and Rainy Dog. Despite overall positive critics, I think this movie is the weakest part of the trilogy even though it's still slightly above average.Just as the first film, Ley Lines focuses on Chinese-born Japanese that have to face a lot of prejudice and racism which is made clear right from the start in a beautiful and surreal opening sequence. Just like in the second movie, the main characters team up with a prostitute that is also looking for a purpose in life. The main characters clash with local gangsters that also have a foreign background which is also typical for the trilogy.On the other side, Ley Lines focuses on three characters instead of a lone wolf. It tells the story of two brothers and their school friend who leave the countryside on a train and hope to become rich, famous and accepted in Tokyo. Upon arriving, they get tricked and robbed by a prostitute but she gets beaten up by her pimp and crosses the path with the trio again and decides to accompany and help them this time. The trio first sells petroleum-based inhalant toulene for a weird local low-level criminal. When they realize that they are still living like outcasts, they plan on moving illegally to Brazil on a cargo ship. In order to finance such a resettlement, they rob a local gangster clan that chases them down until the final showdown at the port. Ley Lines has a few brutal and explicit scenes like the other two movies, for example when the prostitute gets beaten up by her pimp and when she has to serve two weird clients which are events that convince her to change her profession, life and identity. On the other side, the film has some situation comedy as well. The brothers' friend is weird, overenthusiastic and eccentric which adds a lot of humour and pace to the film but also feels somewhat exaggerated and redundant at times. The prostitute is also quite quirky and has sexual intercourse with all members of the trio to cheer them up which is portrayed in a surprisingly neutral way as this doesn't provoke any conflicts between the four characters. The film is overall less brutal and intense than the first movie and less melancholic and solitary than the second instalment. It's somewhere in between those two films and feels directionless at times when weird situation comedy and uplifting moments are followed by rather depressing or boring sequences. Despite a few solid ideas like showing the constant shift of ups and downs in the lives of the three outsiders, Ley Lines is somehow missing its own distinctive identity and has a few minor lengths.In conclusion, Ley Lines is still a slightly above average movie and if you have watched Shinjuku Triad Society and Rainy Dog, you won't regret watching this third and last part of the Black Society Trilogy either. If you haven't watched the other two films, there are numerous other Japanese gangster movies of much better quality you should watch first. Let me suggest you Another Lonely Hit-man, Gozu and Outrage.

This was a much more character-driven storyline than one might expect from Miike, and very nicely done, although it doesn't exactly score huge points for originality. We have the hooker with the heart of gold, and the usual tale of three disaffected youths trying to better their lot in life, only to fall into a life of crime that leads to disaster. But all of the characters are still sympathetic, and Miike's way of framing his story against the real sense of disconnection that his Chinese characters feel living in Japan is effective (even if American viewers might only pick it out after having a critic more savvy in Asian societal dynamics explain it first). This is also the most gorgeously shot Miike film I think I've seen, rich with deeply saturated and highly stylized colors. 8/10 from me.

-SPOILER WARNING-Ley Lines is the last part of Miike Takashi's Triad Society trilogy. It deals with one of the director's most constant themes: The Chinese community in Japan. Three first generation Japanese teenagers, born from Chinese parents, decide to leave their hometown, where they don't fit, for Tokyo. There, they meet several characters: a drug maker, played by Sho Aikawa a Takashi's regular, and his African mate, a Chinese born prostitute and a yakuza boss, also Chinese, played by the chameleonic actor Nakenaka Naoto also seen in films such as Gonin and Shall we dance?. It is lighter, funnier and less violent than the other two trilogy's films. Its main concern is to show the difficulties that these people have for integration in Japanese society, and their search for an identity. This is something that Takashi has already tackled in other films such as Dead or Alive and Shinjuku Triad Society. Their small countryside village, where they were born, is probably a too Japanese environment. Even the cosmopolitan city of Tokyo does not satisfy them and they start making plans to travel to Brazil. This is a very interesting and ironic choice as Brazil was the destination of many Japanese emigrants at the turn of the century, a subject explored by Tizuka Yamasaki in her film "Gaijin". Also, the main character in Kurosawa's "Record of a Living Being" plans to move to Brazil with his reluctant family for fear of a nuclear war. Furthermore, Sao Paulo has the largest Japanese community outside of Japan.The film raises questions about how Japan is responding to the influx of Asian immigrants and how these are taken over the Japanese yakuza illegal activities (the running of soapland clubs, pachinko shops and drugs). The area of Shinjuku, once a traditional yakuza feud, is now in the hands of the Chinese triads. Does this mean that proper jobs are only restricted to the Japanese? The Chinese yakuza boss is a clear example of this inability to integrate in Japanese society. His yearning for the motherland is too great. He only finds peace of mind when told Traditional Chinese children stories. He is ruthless if he believes these stories are not "authentic" Chinese stories by killing the storyteller. The last shot of the film is an impressive metaphor of this theme of identity search. Starting as close-up of one of the teenagers and the prostitute in a boat, the camera pulls back and flies away from them who are seen drifting in the middle of the ocean. Miike Takashi is a director that likes trying different film techniques. There is a brilliant hand-held camera sequence as the teenagers are trying to sell drugs in the middle of Shinjuku. This cinema-verity sequence shows to its full the exhilarating, bubbling street scene of this area as well as its growing ethnic diversity. It now ranks alongside other world's hot spots such as London's Soho, New York's Times Square, Paris' Latin Quarter and Barcelona's Barrio Chino. Also Takashi likes breaking with some sexual taboos. In all of his films I have seen he acknowledges the existence of people with a rather peculiar sexual taste, without making any judgement on them. So the prostitute shares a bed with the three teenagers and, out of compassion for one of them, has sex with all of them. This does not seem to cause any problems between the boys. Another sequence involves one the of prostitute's customer who likes to peek inside her vagina. For that purpose he uses some sort of surgical equipment to keep her vagina wide open while he is taking a look. Here, there is a hilarious point of view shot of her vagina showing the man's childish expression of amazement and awe.