Fudoh: The New Generation seems comparatively tame when compared to Takashi Miike’s later shock cinema classics, but the body fluid-loving director nonetheless drenches his teenage yakuza story – about a high school gangster’s revenge against the mobster father who murdered his brother – in all sorts of gonzo nastiness. Riki (Shosuke Tanihara) is out for the blood of daddy Iwao (Tôru Minegishi), and thus orchestrates a plot against pop’s crime syndicate with the help of a gang of adolescent assassins and two femme fatales decked out in schoolgirl outfits, one of whom shoots lethal darts with her vagina. That this uniquely talented killer is also a horny hermaphrodite won’t surprise anyone familiar with Miike’s penchant for the outrageously bizarre, and one can see hints of the filmmaker’s cartoonish Dead or Alive series in both the manga-inspired behemoth who transfers to Riki’s school (and ultimately joins his cause) as well as in actor Riki Takeuchi’s participation as a rival mob big-shot. But Fudoh’s narrative, when stripped bare of its extremeness, is little more than a tepid tale of vengeance, and its portrait of Japanese youth’s disdain for their elders' traditional culture has none of the go-for-broke inventiveness of the thematically similar – yet far superior – Battle Royale.
Comments