The Mole Song: Final

What can one say about a film which opens with a secret agent chained to a cross, beseeching a mermaid for help whilst seagulls attack his genitals, which have been covered in mascarpone, and ends by shifting into a completely different genre after our hero has saved the world from mind altering pasta? Only that it is obviously the work of Takashi Miike.

To fans, this will be obvious, because it is the third part of a trilogy. The final part, we are assured, as even its hero begs for there to be no more sequels, and long-running plot strands are brought to a conclusion. To summarise, these concern the fate of the aforementioned agent, Reiji Kikukawa (Tôma Ikuta), who, at the start of the series, went undercover to investigate the yakuza, endearing himself to powerful Sukiya-kai boss Shuho Todoroki (Kôichi Iwaki) and inadvertently becoming best friends with clan leader Hiura (Shin’ichi Tsutsumi). Now the operation is drawing to a close. Shuho’s ambitious son Leo has arrived on the scene and makes no secret of his loathing for this upstart outsider. Reiki knows that soon his true identity will be exposed, and he is desperate for a way to avoid being killed or having to betray Hiura.

Complicating all this is Reiji’s abiding love for Junna (Riisa Naka), the girl back home whom he is determined to marry. That doesn’t stop him from making himself sexually available to others at every opportunity, even when he knows he’s looking at a honey trap or when the only person showing an interest is pointy-toothed blingster assassin Nekozawa (Takasi Okamura). Gay sex is still very much a taboo in Japanese cinema; Takashi works around this by presenting an intimate shower scene using puppets, Happytime Murders style, which is a whole different kind of obscene. Reiki’s lustfulness is not interpreted like that of James Bond, however. It is understood as a sign of weakness and a comic trait, an aspect of the very broad comedy which Japanese audiences (and kids the world over) love. Reiji’s singular fashion sense comes from the same place, as does the bizarre scene in which Leo wanders around with an arrow stuck in his arse.

Junna is, naturally, a point of vulnerability for our death-dicing hero, but more worryingly, she might be on the verge of dumping him, something which he is totally unequipped to deal with. Meanwhile, it emerges that the ‘speed-a-roni’ – methamphetamine-infused pasta – which he sought to destroy in the previous instalment has at least partially sdurvived and is being shipped to Yokohama. Fearing the chaos which it could bring to respectable family dinner tables (he may have misunderstood the yakuza’s financial model somewhat), Reiki is determined to stop it, which forces him to go to greater and greater extremes.

Despite the film’s exuberant silliness, Takashi is always meticulous about his craft. There are some nicely structured action scenes here and he makes great use of the extant visual language of police and secret agent films. Violent interludes assure us that the threat posed by the gangsters is real, and in his quieter moments, Tôma succeeds in conveying some of the real sadness associated with long term undercover work. Though he doesn’t get a lot of screentime with Shin’ichi here, the chemistry between them means that newcomers will immediately recognise the importance of their friendship and the moral dilemma which it creates.

This isn’t Takashi’s best work, but if you’re not put off by the excess of it all, you’ll find it a lot of fun, and a satisfying end to the series.

The Mole Song: Final screened as part of the 2022 Fantasia International Film Festival.