"Edited with the flash of a feature-length commercial, Yoshimitsu Morita's latest comedy recalls some of the brittle deadpan of his 1984 success satirizing the school examination system, The Family Game. Here, in a much more lavish production, Morita dissects the multimillion-dollar world of television advertising. The episodic story features two struggling young admen who have no private life because they are consumed with spying, blackmail and expense-account seductions of temperamental stars and greedy managers. In an all-out corporate war they battle their way through discos, hostess bars, bedrooms, think tanks and pep talks to a final virtuoso takeoff on the famous Kabuki play Chushingura ('The Loyal 47 Retainers') in order to keep from being swallowed up in a nefarious merger scheme. Bawdy yet naive, and visually stunning throughout, The Mercenaries shows that writer-director Morita once again has his finger on the pulse of contemporary Japan." Audie Bock