Takashi Miike has a reputation as the bad boy of Japanese cinema. But the impression one gets from the star of his latest offering, Shield of Straw, is that the controversial filmmaker is a dream director for many actors.
"We all love working with him," Takao Osawa says of the prolific Miike, who made his name with direct-to-video productions but has helmed more mainstream films in recent years such as samurai epic 13 Assassins (2012) and this crime thriller produced by Warner Brothers Japan that had its world premiere at this year's Cannes Film Festival.
A big reason for this is that Miike makes sure things don't get too stressful on set. For even though working on the high-profile, big budget production must have had its pressures, the director "always smiles during shooting. This made me feel relaxed and less stressed," Osawa says.
Still, this does not mean that working on Shield of Straw was a complete breeze for the 45-year-old actor. He plays a dedicated cop who - together with four colleagues - is handed the daunting assignment of safely transporting a serial killer rapist with a 1 billion yen bounty placed on his head by a young victim's vengeful, super-wealthy grandfather. The journey of more than 1,000 kilometres needs to be completed within 48 hours.
To prepare for the role of security police inspector Kazuki Mekari, the former model turned TV and film actor underwent physical training to acquire a more muscular physique. "I also received professional training in shooting and kickboxing from a retired police officer, stunt director and other experts in order to make my body gestures appropriate for my character," Osawa says.
In a country with strict laws forbidding almost all forms of firearm ownership and as few as two gun-related homicides a year, he also took measures to familiarise himself with a weapon his character is shown firing with precision early on in the crime thriller-actioner.
Shot in Taiwan - because many of its more spectacular scenes were not allowed to be filmed in Japan - Shield of Straw contains its share of eye-catching action scenes that involve guns and other deadly weapons. Arguably the stand-out sequence is a spectacular highway pile-up that Osawa says is his favourite scene.