The best Naoto Takenaka’s thriller movies
If you love cinema, you will share this ranking of the best Naoto Takenaka’s movies, although you may have ordered them differently. In any case, we hope you love it and with a little luck discovering a movie that you still don’t know about Naoto Takenaka.
Shinjuku Incident
6.9/10
Steelhead is a Chinese laborer who comes to Japan hoping for a better life. Unable to find honest work and bullied into the shadows with his fellow Chinese illegal immigrants, he soon finds himself ascending as the boss of a black market mob. After providing a deadly service to a powerful Yakuza crime boss, Steelhead’s rise to mafia power spirals rapidly out of control as he’s given reign over the dangerous and lucrative Shinjuku district.
Patlabor 2: The Movie
7.5/10
A Japanese police unit who use giant anthropomorphic robots (called Labors) is caught up in a political struggle between the civilian authorities and the military when a terrorist act is blamed on an Air Force jet. With the aid of a government agent, the team gets close to a terrorist leader to stop things from going out of control when after the military is impelled to impose martial law.
Until the End of the World
6.8/10
Set in 1999, Claire's life is forever changed after she survives a car crash with some bank robbers, who enlist her help to take the money to a drop in Paris. On the way she runs into another fugitive from the law Dr. Farber, an American who is being chased by the CIA. They want to confiscate a device his father invented which allows anyone to record their dreams and visions. On the run they travel the globe from Berlin to Lisbon to Moscow to Tokyo, ending up in Australia at his father's research facility, where they hope to play back the recordings Farber captured for his blind mother.
Manhunt
5.2/10
Accused of a murder he didn't commit, a prosecutor sets out on a mission to clear his name.
Sweet Whip
5.8/10
When Naoko was a freshman in high school she was kidnapped and imprisoned by a man who lived next door. For one month, she went through hell. Finally, she killed the man and escaped. Now as an adult, Naoko is a doctor specializing in infertility treatment, but she also has another side. Naoko is a popular master in a S&M club.
Mutant Girls Squad
5.6/10
Rin a young high school student is your everyday awkward girl who gets bullied by her fellow students. On her 16th birthday, Rin gets an unexpected surprise: she finds out that she is, on her father's side, a half-mutant.
Gonin
6.7/10
Five men plot to steal a large sum of money from the local yakuza, but everything does not go as planned and the men find themselves hunted down by contract killers.
Tokyo Fist
7/10
A businessman, Tsuda, runs into a childhood friend, Tajuki, on the subway. Tajuki is working as a semiprofessional boxer. Tsuda soon begins to suspect that Tajuki might be having an affair with his fiancée Hizuru. After an altercation, Tsuda begins training rigorously himself, leading to an extremely bloody, violent confrontation.
TAP: Perfect Education
4.4/10
In Okinawa, a down-and-out middle-aged yakuza underling named Shidara kidnaps and confines a high school girl named Yui, the daughter of a fellow yakuza’s mistress.
Ley Lines
6.9/10
The story follows a trio of Japanese youths of Chinese descent who escape their semi-rural upbringing and relocate to Shinjuku, Tokyo, where they befriend a troubled Shanghai prostitute and fall foul of a local crime syndicate. Like many of Miike's works, the film examines the underbelly of respectable Japanese society and the problems of assimilation faced by non-ethnically Japanese people in Japan.
Perfect Education 5: Amazing Story
5.5/10
Because of the desolate landscape, Kobayashi chose snow-covered Hokkaido (the most northern island of Japan) as the setting for Amazing Story, a light-erotic drama about a lonely man, Kenji, who kidnaps the woman of his dreams. The woman is Harumi, a hairdresser in the deserted town where Kenji has just arrived. It's never really busy in her business. Harumi's husband is a gambling addict and spends all Harumi's money. Maybe that's why Harumi doesn't try very hard to escape when Kenji kidnaps her. His concern about her and his boundless worship probably help, too. Something strange and beautiful blossoms between the kidnapper and his victim, but can this be the basis of a long and happy encounter?
Perfect Education 3
6.2/10
A lonely young Japanese student, Ai Narushima (Kana Ito) goes on a field trip with her school. At night she decides to take a taxi into the city. The Chinese taxi driver, Bo Tony Ho, is also a lonely soul and on a whim, decides to kidnap the young student. He takes her to the countryside and confines her in a room for days. The taxi driver doesn't abuse the student, but at night attempts to cuddle next to her. Eventually the lonely young Japanese student realizes he is as lonely as she is.
Muscle Heat
5.1/10
In the year 2009, a young policeman must collapse a Yakuza family whose members make a large profit with a new drug.
A Night in Nude: Salvation
6/10
A beautiful mother and her two daughters run a bar in a town. They have a dream of becoming rich, reforming the building, and living as celebrities. With no chance of their dream coming true with just their everyday earnings, they had another face - blinding the elderly with their beauty, putting on insurance coverage and seeking to get rich quick by murdering. However, their scheme begins to collapse from one little mistake.
The Mystery of Rampo
6.6/10
Edogawa Rampo is a writer whose latest work is censored by the government, deemed too disturbing and injurious to the public to be allowed to be published. However, after burning his drafts, his publisher shows him a newspaper with an account of events just like his forbidden story. As the film progresses, fantasy and reality intermingle in a tale that draws heavily on influences from Poe and Stoker's Dracula. The film's strongly Expressionistic direction skillfully combines a variety of media (animation, computer-generated imagery, grainy black-and-white fast film stock, color negatives) for artistic effect.
A Night in Nude
6.5/10
Jiro is a Tokyo man who offers a stand-in service where he'll do "anything". A woman claiming to be from Fukuoka wants to be shown around Tokyo and see the sights. What Jiro doesn't know is that this woman isn't who she says she is. She's on the run from her Yakuza boyfriend, and Jiro is going to be unwittingly entwined in the situation.
The Black Swindler: Movie
5.5/10
Freeze Me
6.2/10
Chihiro is raped by three men and it is captured on video camera. She leaves her hometown and prepares to marry a colleague five years later, when one of the rapists arrives and says the others are on their way. He behaves like her long-lost lover and mistreats her again. Chihiro takes revenge, kills him and puts him in a freezer. The other rapists are awaiting a similar fate...
Angel Guts: Red Vertigo
5.4/10
Nami is a nurse and the unwilling object of her patients' lust. When she is hit by a car whilst fleeing from the home of her unfaithful boyfriend, the driver of the car takes her as a sexual prisoner.
The Big Bee
5.7/10
Set in 1995. A helicopter, operated remotely, is hovering in the sky over a nuclear power plant. The power company, prefectural government and media all receive a fax. The fax contains a threat that if the nuclear power plant is not taken offline the helicopter will be dropped. 8 hours is given as the deadline. Making the situation even more dire, a young child is in the helicopter.
