The beginning is pretty fun too.  But yeah, beginning and the end are great.  I always get lost in the middle (seen it like 2-3 times).  It's definitely behind Marathon Man, and 3 days of the condor in terms of 70s conspiracy thrillers.  Maybe even Capricorn One, although I haven't seen that one in a while.   I've always found Beatty very overrated.  I prefer Shampoo over this one.  It's  probably the only Beatty film I really like.

Did a mini Miike fest this week:

Shield of Straw--this one had the best premise.  Scumbag pedophile killer has a bounty (2 bil yen) put on him by a rich guy and the cops have to bring him in (shades of Midnight Run).  And it starts off well for the first 40 mins or so.  You got people trying to kill this guy for the money from all angles.  It slows down and we get focused on the main character including the killer.  This is where it just bores me .  It gets predictable and the actor playing the killer really doesn't make me care about the character.  Honestly, I just wanted them to kill him because he was annoying.  A misfire here by Miike but not unwatchable.  He should have just went gonzo with it instead of getting all predictable.

Lesson of Evil; seen this one once before and was curious about rewatching it.   First off, the guy playing the villan is great.  You notice acting differences immediatley.  He's evil and fucked up but there is a charisma and you care what happens to him more or less.  I think the plot is the weak point, they would have been better off streamlining it.  I ended up dozing off for a few mins because it took pretty long to get to the best part of the film--the ending.  I admit, when I first saw the ending sequence I thought it was overkill. Now, I see it as brilliant filmaking by Miike.  There's one Matrix inspired sequence that is very cool.  And another one that takes advantage of hand held
camera shots.  Oh, this will never be remade in the USA because of...well if you watch it you'll understand.  This one was good

First Love--this one was probably my favorite.  It's a story about love buried in with Miike's usual violence and yakuza wackiness.  And I have no problem with that.  It's very heavy on black comedy, so you can't really take the violent bits all that seriously.  This takes place mostly at night so there are a lot of Tokyo here which I appreciated.  USA directors don't know how to make cities anymore but thankfully that doesn't extended to foreign directors.  Oh I focused on another character and found her a lot more interesting this time I watched.  I think Miike probably hit his creative peak in the late 90s-early 2000s.  But this one was just as enjoyable.  And really, I liked the softer/character non chaos moments just as much.