"Director: Takashi Ishii"

• Gonin 2 | DVD | (22/07/2002) from £11.08   |  Saving you £8.91 (80.42%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Takashi Ishii's sequel to the brutal 'Gonin' is another two-fisted mix of blood and bullets. Instead of a quintet of five desperate men 'Gonin 2' features five very angry women all from different backgrounds. The film begins as Masamichi Toyama a man with a large gambling debt is tracked down by his Yakuza lenders and forced to endure a beating and the rape of his wife. Humiliated Masamichi sets out for revenge with only a sword but events escalate as his path crosses the Gonin

• Gonin | DVD | (27/12/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Takashi Ishii's visually sumptuous gangster movie Gonin ("The Five") is fascinating in its violence, its perversity and its quirkiness, even though its basic plot premise is fairly standard. Disco owner Bandai (Kouichi Sato) owes money to the yakuza boss Ogoshi and decides to rob him rather than pay him--the first part of the film shows him recruiting a crew of the damaged and despairing to help with the job, and disaster follows. Ogoshi hires the more or less unstoppable one-eyed hit man Kyoya ("Beat" Takeshi) and everyone ends up dead--robbers, gangsters and assassins--in an escalating sequence of reprisals. What is different about the film is the odd tangents the plot shoots off at--the sudden sexual attraction between Bandai and the con-man Mitsuya, the truth about the phone calls the desperate sacked salary man Ogiwara keeps making to his family--and its strong visual style. Crucial events take place in the background of shots, the sudden shift from neon-lit back al! leys to sunlight in the last sequence hits you like a blow in the face. Terrifying in its casual violence and impressive in its bleak nihilism, Gonin is one of the most interesting genre films of the 1990s.--Roz Kaveney

• The Black Angel | DVD | (25/02/2002) from £12.90   |  Saving you £-2.91 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Takashi Ishi's visually stylish The Black Angel is a fascinating cross between Japanese gangster film and Jacobean revenge tragedy. Sent away to the US after the slaughter of her parents by rivals led by her half-sister Chaiko, Ikko (Riona Hazuki) returns determined to reclaim her yakuza kingdom. Ikko is obsessed with childish memories of Mayo the hitwoman, the original Black Angel, entrusted with getting her out of the country. The intervening 14 years have been hard on Mayo--being the Black Angel is tough on the nerves--and she is hired to kill Ikko, not realising they have met before. This is a tragic film in which three strong women are destined to destroy each other through the trickery of male betrayal; from the beginning, as a child is smuggled away and a mother told the infant is dead, it is clear that we are in a land of myth, with no happy endings. A night time Tokyo of bright lights and dark shadows, of dead-end corridors and escalators that lead you only to your death, is provided as a moody backdrop. Takashi's inventive set pieces of mood and action include a shootout in a strip club set to Verdi's Requiem. On the DVD: The Black Angel is presented on disc in widescreen, while the moody, atmospheric score is done full justice by the Dolby Digital soundtrack. The only special features are filmographies and biographies, production stills and the theatrical trailer. --Roz Kaveney

• Black Angel 2 | DVD | (05/08/2002) from £11.98   |  Saving you £8.01 (66.86%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Takashi Ishii continues to explore the dark side of Tokyo in this sequel to Black Angel. This time Yuki Amami plays Mayu an assasin who becomes involved in a tangled web of friendship and revenge that can only end in despair. Ishii's direction makes for a dark gritty and intense move using violence as an expression of anguish.

• Tokyo Bullet Reloaded - Black Angel / Score / Gonin | DVD | (01/02/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The Black Angel: Ddirector Takashi Ishii continues to explore his distinct vision of Tokyo as a dark forbidding Technopolis a city of faceless chrome and marble structures cold lights and deep shadows. The Black Angel stars Riona Hazuki as Ikko the most powerful female action heroine ever to hit celluloid. At age 6 Ikko was safely put on a plane to Los Angeles by hitman Mayo but not before seeing her Yakuza boss father and mistress mother killed before her eyes. Flash forward 14 years. Ikko returns to Tokyo seeking revenge for the killings. She too calls herself the Black Angel styling herself after Mayo whom she remembers as a towering almost superhuman figure. When her target realises that she is after him and his gang he enlists the original Black Angel to wipe out Ikko and the stage is set for a violent reunion... (Dir. Takashi Ishii 1997) Gonin: Japanese Director Takashi Ishii's brutal hyperstylish hallucinogenic "" roller coaster"" of a movie takes a group of five desperate men through the robbery of a Yakuza gangster and the bloody revenge that follows. Ishii has assembled a cast of Japan's coolest actors including Naoto Takenaka (""Shall We Dance"") and the legendary 'Beat' Takeshi Kitano and his fluid sensual camera work creates sequences of unrivalled ballistic bloodshed. But what really raises this movie to a different level is the off-beat characters: 'Beat' Takeshi's sadistic portrayal of the one-eyed hitman gay hustlers and downtrodden ex-cops give 'Gonin' an eccentric film noir atmosphere that will blow you away. (Dir. Takashi Ishii 1995) Score: A gang of thieves come together for a jewellery heist one which they naturally carry out in their finest Reservoir Dogs outfits. All goes pretty much according to plan until a pair of psychotic highway robbers follow them to their hideout and attempt to part the gang from their loot... (Dir. Atsushi Muroga 1995)

• Tokyo Bullet Reloaded - Black Angel 2 / Score 2 / Gonin 2 Subtitled) | DVD | (27/09/2004) from £18.39   |  Saving you £6.60 (35.89%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Some of the finest examples of Japanese action cinema available in one box set. Features: The Black Angel 2: Takashi Ishii continues to explore the dark side of Tokyo in this sequel to Black Angel. This time Yuki Amami plays Mayu an assasin who becomes involved in a tangled web of friendship and revenge that can only end in despair. Ishii's direction makes for a dark gritty and intense move using violence as an expression of anguish. Gonin 2: Takashi Ishii's sequel

• Freezer | DVD | (27/05/2002) from £6.89   |  Saving you £8.10 (54.00%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Freezer is a disturbing thriller from director Takashi Ishii about Chihiro a woman trying to escape the memories of being raped by three men while they filmed the incident. She leaves her hometown to start a new life and five years later is a professional working in Tokyo engaged to one of her colleagues Yusuke. Without warning one of the rapists appears and threatens to turn her life into a living hell with news that the other two are on their way with the videotape of the rape