Miike Takashi on Redemption Without God in ‘Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo’

Every “Bad Lieutenant” film has had to answer the same question in its own way: what happens to a corrupt man when there’s no God left to save him?

Abel Ferrara’s 1992 original built its entire moral architecture around Catholic guilt, climaxing with its lapsed-Catholic detective collapsed before a church altar, pleading for absolution from a God he’s convinced has turned away from him. When Werner Herzog picked up the mantle in 2009 with “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans,” he stripped that scaffolding out almost entirely, trading redemption for a more absurdist, karmic universe with no supreme being to answer to. For Miike Takashi‘s “Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo,” which has its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, neither approach felt right.

Rather than remove religion from the equation like Herzog did, or lean into it like Ferrara, Miike replaced it with a different framework entirely: the diffuse reverence for nature found in Japanese spirituality.

“In Japan we don’t follow monotheistic religions, at least most people don’t, but we also do have a sense of spirituality towards various gods, be that something like nature,” Miike says. “We have tremendous respect towards nature. It is something that we fear.”

That framework, he says, shapes the slow corrosion of Lieutenant Yabuki (Oguri Shun), a detective hiding a drug addiction and gambling debts who partners with U.S. FBI agent Gwen Birgssen (Lily James) while pursuing a killer tied to the Yakuza. “I think that this character is representative in a lot of ways of men who live in Japan,” Miike says, describing a stench that eventually “starts to be something that he absorbs himself.”

Miike sees that corrosion as structural, not just personal. Asked whether the film argues that effective policing sometimes means becoming part of the underworld it investigates, he agrees without hesitation.

“Police as an organization, in having to investigate these various crimes, it’s inevitable that you start to dirty yourself in that environment,” Miike says. “And especially for the character in ‘Bad Lieutenant,’ he’s someone who is trying to infiltrate these criminal organizations, and so he falls prey to that.”

For the role, Miike didn’t reach for an actor already associated with darkness. Miike says he sorts actors into two camps. “There are actors who are very invested in the image that they’ve built up for themselves, their own popularity, and instead of trying to shock their fans, they often want to take on roles that are expected of them,” Miike says. “And then there are actors like Oguri Shun, who at times gets a lot of joy from betraying these expectations.”

This is the fourth collaboration between Miike and Oguri. Miike points to a lesser-known chapter of the actor’s career as evidence of that restlessness: more than a decade split between film and the stage, performing Shakespeare.

“Not only is he a film actor, but he’s also a theater actor, and for a period of over a decade, half of his career was in the theater, doing Shakespeare,” Miike says. “People who know that aspect of his career shouldn’t be surprised that he would take on a role such as this. It’s probably actually quite obvious why he would want to do it.”

Opposite Oguri is James, a casting mandate that predated his arrival on the project by way of co-financier and distributor Neon. On set, he found her personal demeanor at odds with the volatility of the role.

“She’s very mild-mannered and very passionate about her work,” Miike says. “It probably took a lot of courage to take on this role, but once she accepted it, rather than trying to make herself comfortable, she was more trying to adapt to the ways of a Japanese film set.” He sees a throughline connecting his two leads: “I think that there is some kind of commonality between Lily James and Oguri Shun.”

Violence has followed Miike throughout his career, from “Ichi the Killer” to “Audition,” but he says his own interest has drifted over time from the imagery itself toward the psychology of the people carrying it out.

“It’s not that my aims are to depict violence or violent people. I think that I’m drawn to certain characters and protagonists in the script,” Miike says, describing an urge to push those outlaws past the limits imposed by convention and audience comfort. “I want to say you’re more than what you are written to be in this script, and I want you to be able to free yourself. I think that impulse is what leads to these types of violent depictions.” He’s quick to note the instinct cuts both ways: “If we were to follow a protagonist who didn’t resort to violence for their expression of power, then I might make a very calm family drama.”

Producer Sam Pressman, who inherited the “Bad Lieutenant” property from his late father, Edward R. Pressman, has described the franchise as an “anti-franchise franchise,” designed to hand each director total license over their own version of the character. Miike says that freedom extended through every stage of his production.

“I was given so much freedom. They were constantly checking to make sure that I was satisfied at each stage of the production, including the script writing, the acting on set, and even the editing process,” Miike says. “I really felt like at the center of the project were my own sensibilities, and that those sensibilities were very much respected.”

He’d like to see that openness pushed further, with other directors reinterpreting the character in other settings. “If a ‘Bad Lieutenant’ were to be made in France, it would be a French ‘Bad Lieutenant.’ In the Philippines, it would be a Filipino ‘Bad Lieutenant,’” Miike says. “Personally, I would love to see a ‘Bad Lieutenant’ film made in Central or South America.”

That freedom hasn’t changed how Miike sees himself as a filmmaker. Despite the international scale of “Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo,” made with Neon, Jeremy Thomas and Pressman, he still identifies with the leaner conditions of his early career, when limited resources forced a different kind of energy out of a crew.

“I still recognize myself as a pretty low-budget filmmaker,” Miike says. “The things that begin to emerge and become really tangible on these low-budget sets is the strength and energy of the staff, the passion of the actors. These are people who are still trying to challenge themselves, and so they’re able to enjoy the process of making films in a very pure way.”

Age, he admits, has slowed him down regardless of budget. “Time has passed so quickly, and I’ve gotten older. At this point, you could call me an old geezer,” Miike says with a chuckle. “My pace has slowed down, and I think that’s just something that is inevitable.”

He’s careful, though, not to romanticize scarcity. “It’s not that I enjoy working in low budgets. I have dreams of having such a huge budget that I’m just like, ‘What do I do with all of this money?’” Miike says. “But I don’t get those types of opportunities very often, so I’m accepting my lot and working with what I can.”

“Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo” is produced by Neon, Jeremy Thomas and Sam Pressman, alongside Miike’s longtime producer Saka Misako, and also stars Kunimura Jun, Mamiya Shôtarô, Kouri Yuka, Nakata Hideo, Murakami Jun, Iwata Takanori and WWE star Liv Morgan.