Directors in a profitable rut often feel the urge to try something new, even though the box office tells them to keep making the same old. Sometimes a change of genre can work wonders. After grinding out 48 episodes of the "Tora-san" dramedy series, Yoji Yamada ventured into the feudal past for the first time with 2002's "Tasogare Seibei (The Twilight Samurai)" and reaped more honors abroad than he had for all the "Tora-san" films combined.

But some directors need to get back into their old groove — and that is manifestly the case with Takashi Miike. This former king of cult long ago transformed himself into a maker of commercial films in a range of genres, including last year's widely and rightly bashed thriller "Wara no Tate (Shield of Straw)."

But Miike first became known abroad for his gangster films, from the grittily noirish "Gokudo Kuroshakai (Rainy Dog)" in 1997 to the deliriously surreal "Koroshiya 1 (Ichi the Killer)" in 2001. His latest, "Mogura no Uta: Sennyu Sosakan Reiji (The Mole Song: Undercover Agent Reiji)," is a return to the genre after a long absence — and it brings out the uninhibited best in him.