If you’re a fan of the kind of cinema that feels like a pressurized steam pipe about to burst, Takashi Miike is your dude. While most directors would be happy finishing one masterpiece in a lifetime, Miike dropped Ichi the Killer, Visitor Q and The Happiness of the Katakuris all in the same year as this movie, a yakuza epic that trades the cartoonish gore of Ichi for a dense, Shakespearean power struggle drenched in sweat and cigarette smoke.

It all kicks off when a yakuza member, played by Miike himself, decides to violently assault a hostess on rival turf. He gets whacked for his trouble, and just like that, the match is dropped into a pool of gasoline. This isn’t just a street fight; it’s a catalyst for a full-scale gang war, as every faction in the city scrambles for a piece of the pie.

Written by Shigenori Takechi (Graveyard of Honor), Agitator isn’t just a shoot-’em-up. It’s a dual-layered look at how the mob actually works: You’ve got the senior figures like Mr. Kaito (played by Hiroki Matsukata, The Rapacious Jailbreaker) doing the backroom maneuvering. These guys treat human lives like chess pieces, playing a slow game of political redistribution. Then you have the low-level soldiers and street-level mobsters who actually have to bleed for the decisions made in those air-conditioned offices. The movie builds toward an inevitable collision where the suits and the tracksuits finally clash in a messy, tragic finale.

For the longest time, we only had the theatrical cut. But Miike doesn’t do brief. This release finally brings the two-part, 200-minute extended version out of the shadows of Japanese VHS obscurity. It’s a sprawling, epic deep dive into the yakuza underworld that demands you sit down, shut up, and watch the world burn.

As one character says, “If life is shit, then why shouldn’t the two of us smash into it as hard as we can?” Any movie that ends with two men driving a stick of dynamite into a building is one I love.

The Radiance Films Blu-ray of Agitator has a high-definition digital transfer of theatrical version and a standard definition transfer of 200 minute extended version of this movie, presented in its original two-part form; a newly filmed interview with Takashi Miike; audio commentary by Tom Mes; a trailer; a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Time Tomorrow and a limited edition booklet featuring new writing by Tom Mes. You can get it from MVD.