I have written many times about Japanese director Takashi Miike. He is one of the world’s most versatile filmmakers, working at a furious pace across a broad range of genres and subject matters. He used to make a quite shocking number of films per year: between 2001 and 2002 he directed 15 feature films, TV specials and direct-to-video productions. In 2013, however, his pace had slowed considerably; he directed just two. The first was the police thriller Shield of Straw. The second was a manga adaptation and absurd comedy called The Mole Song: Undercover Agent Reiji. When placed alongside Shield of Straw it forms a convincing proof of Miike’s range, as the two films are both great to watch but could hardly be more different.

The Mole Song follows Reiji (Toma Ikuta), pretty much the worst junior police officer in Tokyo, who gets conscripted into a top secret mission to infiltrate a major yakuza clan and gather evidence on its drug distribution operations. It begins with Reiji tied stark naked to the front of a car that’s been driven at 80 miles per hour around central Tokyo, and works its mad, frantic way from there.

This is a ridiculous movie; deliberately so. The plot flies thick and fast, the jokes come in a seemingly unending flood, the characters are all ridiculously broadly drawn, and there’s no line of dialogue not delivered with some form of brooding intensity or over-the-top screaming. If there’s a criticism to be made it’s that the film gets a little bogged down towards the end of the second act. It’s a 130 minute comedy, which is reaching Apatow-lengths of self-
indulgence, and while I loved the movie for the most part 10 to 15 minutes could be trimmed from it and make it even better.

Toma Ikuta is an immensely appealing lead, playing Reiji with a blend of incompetence, foolishness and charm. The character is utterly out of his depth, and Ikuta does a good job varying the tone of his performance as he goes: sometimes running around in a blind panic, sometimes headstrong and over-confident. Reiji is an idiot, but he’s a loveable one. The supporting cast are hilarious, notably Shinichi Tsutsumi as the mid-level yakuza brother Masaya Hiura, aka “Crazy Papillon”, whose hand-crafted suits are adorned with various butterfly motifs and designs. He swears a bond of brotherhood with Reiji very early on in the film, and they make a strong double act together.

It’s not just Papillon’s butterfly suits that make a visual impact. The film’s costume designer has clearly had a field day, as have the production designer and Miike himself. The Mole Song is a riot of colour and movement, so far removed from Miike’s more serious films (13 Assassins, Audition) that you’d be forgiven for thinking it was the work of a different director.

A few moments do skirt the line of being a little repugnant towards women – often a risk in Japanese cinema – and it must be said that this is an overwhelmingly male film. The one female lead, Riisa Naka, acquits herself well but arguably doesn’t get enough to do. I couldn’t decide whether the film is attempting to parody chauvinistic attitudes in yakuza cinema or simply indulges in them – either way it could do better. It also gets surprisingly violent from
time to time. Slapstick becomes a much harder proposition when the guy doing the pratfall gains an open head wound, and it seems no matter how far Miike stretches himself beyond the films that made him famous internationally those confrontational moments of physical violence are never far behind. For me these moments gave the film an edge; other viewers may find them needlessly graphic and unpleasant.

The Mole Song leaves itself wide open for sequels, which it indeed received in 2016 and 2021. All up it is a wonderfully silly and enjoyable comedy series. Given Miike’s popularity it is a wonder that they are yet to be released to home video with English subtitles. This has “cult classic” written all over it.