Ley Lines

The third in Miike’s loose “Black Society Trilogy” (after Shinjuku Triad Society and 1997’s Rainy Dog, none of which share a continuous storyline), Ley Lines follows a trio of outcast friends—first-generation Japan-born children of Chinese parents—who flee from their countryside home to Tokyo in order to escape prosecution for a beating they inflicted on a bigoted local junkyard owner. Landing in filthy Kabuki-cho (the Shinjuku neighborhood that’s the setting of many of Miike’s films), they hook up with a Chinese prostitute named Anita and an African drug dealer named Barbie, and try to make enough money to escape Japan and start a new life in Brazil. But when they steal from local Chinese crime lord Wong (comedian and actor Naoto Takanaka, Shall We Dance?), it sets a series of events into motion that can only end in betrayal and tragedy. One of Miike’s best, and most heartbreaking films, set in the seedy world of small-time criminals and gangsters but without many of the exploitation elements associated with the director’s work, relying instead on storytelling and character development for its powerful effect. DVD OUT OF PRINT!

Series: Shinjuku Outlaw: 13 From Takashi Miike

Venue: Walter Reade Theater