Kurôzu zero

If you assemble a staff like Takashi Miike, Shun Oguri, and Meisa Kuroki, you can expect a better than average high school drama.

If the story isn't interesting, the mayhem that goes on the screen keeps things going. It's a mindless entertainment, no doubt about that, but it's designed to cater to certain crowd of people that identifies with this sort of story.

Based on a comic by Hiroshi Takahashi, Crows Zero is about Genji Takiya (Shun Oguri) who transfered to Suzuran Boy's School. The school is the lowest grade high school in the province. The students are all delinquents, but Genji is notch above the rest. Nobody has become the top leader in this high school, but maybe Genji will succeed where no one else have in the past.

The story is definitely not for everybody. But if you understand the plot, it's quite entertaining. Director Miike puts in his usual high quality behind the chaotic directing style that he has.

Just don't choose this movie as a one to watch with your girlfriend on a date.

Personally, I'm not a Miike Takashi fan, and I usually dislike these "Furyou" (deliquent high schooler) genre films, but it was surprisingly enjoyable film even for me.

The plot is quite typical of high school movies. Genji (Oguri Shun), a son of yakuza boss must achieve an unprecedented unification of notorious Suzuran High School (AKA: Crow's High School) in order to take over his father's position. Genji soon finds the strongest guy in the school: Serizawa (Yamada Takayuki), who was also set to conquer all other classes. Genji challenges Serizawa to a duel, but of course, being a newcomer that he is, wasn't taken seriously at first. Genji then seeks help and builds up his own army while defeating other minor 'bosses', and eventually a showdown with Serizawa in his journey to the top of Suzuran High.

The story for this film is extremely well-designed, with excellent flow from beginning to the very end. What I especially liked about this movie is that it was more than just random violence by bunch of kids trying to look badass. Although it IS action packed, the main theme of this film is school politics and friendship. Oguri Shun's character developed very well, from a clueless kid to a leader backed by many trustworthy friends.

Cinematography for this film was extremely well-done, from school to the streets, you can tell the production crew paid attention to the tiniest detail in every single scene. Action was also very well-directed for an exciting 2 hours. I thought it was even more visually pleasing than Miike's "Ryuu ga Gotoku".

Casting for this film is absolutely incredible. I recognized so many faces, many who established themselves in yakuza or delinquent roles, but the most pleasant surprise was Yamada Takayuki, who had his share of dark roles in the past, but never a violent one such as this, and possibly the first as a villain. I've never thought him as a wild type, but he was so cool as a villain and gave his character really big presence in this film. I'm still not convinced with Oguri Shun's acting or his role as a violent punk student, but he seemed to be less out of place as he was in "Hana Yori Dango" dorama series. All the other cast did what they do best, and a very high level of acting overall.

Although I haven't read the manga series, this prequel was very easy to follow. It's impossible to take away the cheesiness associated with manga-adaptation or high school violence, but it was an extremely well-directed action movie with a meaningful message.

Being an adaptation of a Japanese comic book, Crows Zero offers some of the most entertaining fight scenes I've seen in awhile and the soundtrack is awesome. However, just because this film begs not to be taken seriously, doesn't mean I can ignore the shortcomings. There is a Yakuza angle that is never really explored or tied in coherently. The number of loose, underdeveloped subplots is astonishing. Last but not least, the English voice-overs are atrocious; I'd much rather just have subtitles. Everythign else sums up a fun time at the movies. You'll be dropped dead center in one of the toughest schools in the country, Suzuran, which is over run with gangs and violence.

The film is reason enough for Western fans of the Japanese medium, such as anime, manga, and video games to rejoice and I am pretty sure fans of the comic won't have reason to complain either. For its male target audience, it is sure to be a hit. Also, if you watch this film and enjoy it there is also a sequel out in the works which I will cover in the coming weeks

This is the kind of movie where even though there are some noticeable shortcomings, they don't feel like they matter as much as they would in most other movies. Crows Zero kind of feels like a cross between a yakuza movie and a high school movie, and there's a decent amount of action in there for good measure. It takes place at a high school where classes don't seem to exist, and teachers I think are only visible in the first 10-15 minutes of the film. The school is just a battleground, really, with various factions and ambitious gang leaders (largely teenagers) all battling to "control" it.

It's a little strange how it begins sort of comedic and then decides it wants to be serious (albeit in a very heightened way) in the second half. There are probably a few too many characters to keep track of, but at the same time, considering the size of the cast and the pacing, the way they're all balanced is decent. It probably helps that most characters are straightforward, and like a lot of yakuza movies, they're all after essentially the same thing.

It's got a few action scenes throughout, and a pretty big one at the end that's a highlight. The wet, greyish mud a whole heap of people fight in reminded me of the opening action scene in The Raid 2 (2014). Like most times one film reminds me of another - and neither is the kind that EVERYONE has seen - it left me to wonder whether it's intentional, or just by brain methodically finding connections that aren't really there.

Takashi Miike is an extraordinary filmmaker, even if he works sometimes in circumstances that other directors might find ordinary, such as all of the genres that Miike tackles... which are, by a mild estimation, almost all of them. Name a kind of movie, Miike's probably done it, from family movie to samurai epic to just totally f***ed up way-past X-rated stuff, not to mention all of the Yakuza crime movies that by this time should be coming out of his nose from going over so often. But with Crows: Episode Zero, he found a way to tell a Yakuza story just a little different, by making it about the teenage kids (some of them, anyway) of the Yakuza who enroll in an "extreme" high school where it's basically not about learning anything but fighting and ascending the ranks to become the head of the school's bad-ass fightin' kids. It's the kind of movie that, if you are fourteen and watching it, it's like a near wet-dream of awesomeness. For the rest of us, the movie serves as lots of good fun.

And as this is Miike, even the more conventional things in the movie like the whole 'I'm-doing-this-to-out-impress-my-dad' to the 'my-girl's-been-kidnapped' thing, get twisted just a wee bit. And, thankfully, a great dose of humor is sprinkled throughout with really random moments of hilarity (my favorite was when the teen is just talking to his friends on the roof, and casually takes a gigantic ball of some kind and rolls it away at a set of other kids all lined up like bowling pins who get knocked down in silly CGI style), and little lines and things with the characters (another highlight involves a guy trying to impress two girls in a bar, with some disastrous results). But when it's not being funny, Miike is also an excellent director of young, brawny actors who have a lot of energy and talent to burn. And he casts well enough for its target audience; the movie isn't quite violent enough (i.e. Ichi the Killer level) to make it unwatchable for teen eyes, so all of the guys like Genji and Serizawa are cast for ultimate bad-assitude.

Indeed there are some scenes and moments that come close to being vintage Miike for this kind of tough and gritty action movie. There's a fight scene midway through, for example, that is done with no frills and with total excitement as a guy is fighting against a large group of people, and as it starts to rain and he looks down and out he gets back up and, staggeringly, knocks out almost all of them left. It's visceral things like that that work, but it's also how Miike, taking of course from a comic-book (if it weren't a comic-book one would swear a brilliant and ornery teen had written it), takes material that has originality and pumps it up to the level of an crazy sort of epic. Why this school exists and the parents don't mind sending them away to get the crap kicked out of them in a caste system is beyond me, but why carp? We believe it because Miike does, and gets us into the power struggle and the ascension of Genji, even if it means he might go crazy or if another teen, Tokio, possibly may die from a brain aneurysm.

Then again, the movie also has some problems to it as well. The whole element of the girls being kidnapped could have been cut-out, or at least given with a little more development with the female characters before they're plucked away as a kind of plot convenience (if not contrivance) just so there's something else on the plate of 's***-we-need-to-take-care-of' in the story. And the climax of the film, imbued with a real epic sensibility with Genji and Serizawa fighting in a big battle with nearly a hundred students on each side to fight, stumbles a bit as its moments of raw power and energy are awkwardly cut with images of the one guy getting operated on in the hospital - it lacks tension or focus except that surgery is going on, who cares, lets get back to the wicked action - and as well a ballad sung by a woman (we see her singing on stage too) and the fighting done in slow motion. It's almost as if Miike goes too far in his excesses in this whole sequence, and ultimately half of it is really great and the other half is just... lame.

But for any fan of the director's, or anyone looking for a kooky take on rebellious youth in Japan who are only a couple of steps removed from a Battle Royale scenario, it's a good ticket to take. There's tight acting and (mostly) hard-rocking Japanese punk tunes, and the action is often creative and engaging.