Graine de Yakuza

I haven't seen this director's work before. This is my initiation. He sure works with a heavy hand. No subtlety here. Heads roll and blood splatters frequently and often at the hands of small children. Decapitation is particularly repulsive. It's gang warfare and anything goes. It's an eye for an eye. Rural gangs run riot in Kyushu and Kobe plotting to gain control of the illicit drug trade and urging North Korea to involve itself in war with America. It's all about human beings with the worst intentions.

You might call some night club scenes almost comic releief except for the fact that the women entertainers who shoot metal darts from their genital area are amazingly accurate and a man's brains can be seen hanging on a dart after it penetrates his head. Both shocking and tasteless. An hermaphrodite reveals "her" bulge to a surprised woman and then has sex with her. At least this kind of sex is something original. I suppose originality is this director's strongest point and his actors do a great job in all scenes which are literally over the top.

The young Riki Fudoh is particularly charismatic in his mission to curtail his father's cruel and murderous activity.

If savage assassinations with copious blood are what you like this violent film will probably satisfy you although you may not sleep well afterward. On the other hand the killing scenes are so exaggerated and so over the top one might find them almost laughable. I imagine the actors had an hilarious time with the filming of Fudoh.

Now that I am initiated...is it my kind of film? No sir, not for me!

If you thought when Sonny Corleone was "hit" it was over the top, after you see this movie, you will realize that the GodFather barely scraped the bottom. This movie pumps you up then pumps you full of lead. If transvestite "lesbian" schoolgirl assassins that use their "nether regions" to blow your brains out (you gotta see this to believe it!) are not the kick in the head needed to grab the attention of even the most jaded fans of crime movies, there is more than enough "conventional" violence for the traditionalists.

If this movie doesn't get your heart started, you had better take your seeing eye dog to the vet!

Wow! This is movie making.

Fudoh: The New Generation was Takashi Miike's first cross-over success in the West (whether in America or just on the festival circuit I can't say), and it's no wonder- it's the perfect calling card, a work of ferocious energy and sincerity with comedy and drama, extreme violence and heart, kitsch and the bizarre. A lot of things that one would expect to find in the given Miike yakuza can be found here in spades: a blood battle involving brothers, the corrupt old incumbent yakuza, the vicious and surreal thugs out to get their just deserts, and of course in style with carefully composed shots and startlingly edited scenes of action, with deliberate scenes of dialog and actors staring at one another. It shouldn't work, but it does, and to a point that had me laughing, gasping, and sure that even if things worked out "alright" (and alright in the sense of a bloody tale of twisted revenge) it would leave a lasting impression, long after seeing nearly a couple dozen other Miike films.

It's emotional core, for one thing, is exceptional for a Miike film, which helps in springing out the demented comedy, as unlikely as that is. A yakuza kills one of his sons to pay a debt to a gangster- a debt which he crazily relishes as he plants his son's head on the table and laughs maniacally- leaving the living son completely bewildered but swearing on his late brother's honor. Cut to ten years later, as the father barely acknowledges he ever had another son, and Riki Fudoh is now gathering up a small army of outcast teens like him (one girl who can shoot out darts from her privates, little kids with handguns, a big huge lummox who killed his parents, and a hermaphrodite, cause, why the hell not) to get payback by killing off as many yakuza as possible. Crazy? It just might work, after the vicious, grotesque deaths of four council members (the car scene especially is vintage Miike).

You don't have to be completely queued to the artistic aesthetic Miike had with Gozu, or always have a smile on your face ala Katakuris, but Fudoh marks its place in the upper-level of the director's oeuvre by allowing for the low-budget cast to shine through. This goes for scenes that could, by any other director, be deemed unnecessary or even just cruel (i.e. the death of one of the girls by the hands of the North Korean killer Fudoh Sr hires to kill his son, and the hermaphrodite sex scene). In Miike's hands, he treats them like it SHOULD be considered art, not simply exploitation of genre or going for dopey extremes with exit wounds and vaginas. And it is, for those who want it, a success as a comedy, one that allows you to laugh your head off at the kinds of things that would give the squeamish nightmares for weeks. And for those looking for a work that goes even further than Hamlet, here it is!

And, of course, where would a great Miike flick be without a sneering Riki Takeuchi? It's a lot of fun and a truly substantial dramatic effort too, and it's not a bad place to go if you're just getting into the director's elephantine body of very contemporary work.

Fudoh: The New Generation (1996) is Takashi Miike's film which introduced him to the Western audiences and film critics for the first time. After that, he's made many more films which have been shown on festivals and film clubs around the world. Fudoh is alongside Audition (1999) his masterpiece of his films that I've seen. Fudoh tells the story of young boy, Riki Fudoh, who one night sees how his father, a powerful Yakuza gangster, kills his own son, Riki's brother due to some Yakuza "ritual" as the father has to sacrifice something for the crimes he's made to the Yakuza. The Yakuza says that he can get away with the case by chopping his own arm off, but instead he wants to kill his son and bring his head to satisfy the Yakuza. From that day on, Riki seeks revenge for his father without showing it. He becomes the most intelligent student in his school and he forms his own criminal society to fight the old generation Yakuza with the help of some school friends. They include a huge long haired caricature of high school student who crushes everything under him, two cute Japanese girls, which both have some very nasty habits and "tools" and two 6-7 year old boys who commit the assassinations for Riki. Yes, the sentence you just read is true and this is a film by Takashi Miike.

I just love this film in its originality and seriousness. The film is completely over-the-top in some places without ever becoming too gratuitous or (un)intentionally funny, unless Miike wants so. He has the ability to use such symbolism (the ending of Dead or Alive (2000) etc.) that this ability alone would make him a very interesting film maker. Fudoh is a film about same themes as Dead or Alive as they both handle the subject matter of relationships between two men, who cannot quit or change their lethal attitudes and who are enemies but share many similar things. Even more, this film (and Dead or Alive, too) is about human psyche and about the line which appears on the screen at the beginning of the film, before the credits. Human is far more dangerous a beast than any beast we've known from the nature. The ending in Fudoh is very impressive, sudden and great and underlines the message and theme of the film as effectively as the mentioned opening line. This film is about us, but told in the form of a Yakuza drama, as Miike himself is a Japanese and thus Yakuza interests him as a subject matter in his films. Also, the film is about relationships (often gay oriented) between the Yakuza bosses and also relations between fathers and sons, and especially what kinds of things are expected from fathers once they make children. One very unborn "child" is spattered on the face of the huge long haired guy, and maybe that unborn human creature was happier not having to born in this world in the first place? Miike shows and asks us, and those who can or want, try to answer and think about the things in his films. I simply can't imagine a Takashi Miike film being empty in content.

Cinematically this film is very restrained, just like Dead or Alive's middle part after the explosive beginning and the surrealistically wild finale. There are some great images in Fudoh, like the one in which Riki "gets older" after witnessing the brutal murder of the brother, and there's also some beautiful and mythic lights visible, coming from windows etc. and all these things say much more than words ever could, especially when in most cases these lights appear soon after someone's been killed. Fudoh is almost as peaceful as Audition and it is great how the director changes the tones of his films from extremely calm and restrained, to more than wild and explosive. Audition is never wild or explosive, but Fudoh and Dead or Alive sure are. Takashi Miike's ability to handle his films so perfectly is among the things which make his films so unique and fantastic.

The characters in Fudoh are very personal and memorable. The criminals are evil and Riki's partners are crazy, but in a restrained way. The mentioned huge guy has to be seen to be believed, and also one dart wielding female assassin of Riki's is very unbelievable. Some of the violent scenes are very gory, like the poisoning of one Yakuza, which really is effective and grotesque to say the least! The assassinations are brutal and gory, but it all symbolizes the decay of the world as even little children are trained to kill and very effectively, too. None of the violence is exploitative, but some viewers may consider it too graphic and off-putting, but that is always the case with personal, unlimited and symbolic cinema.

Fudoh is very wonderful modern Japanese film and on the same level with the work of Takeshi Kitano, even though these are very different film makers. Equally brilliant and personal, but different in style and elements. Fudoh is Miike's masterpiece and I hope he has many more masterpieces to offer in his career. He has made so much films in such a short time, and all of those which I've managed to see are at least interesting and personal, if not quite masterpieces. Fudoh is among the 10/10 experiences.

I've mentioned in some of my other reviews ('Ezo Ezo Azaraku II' and 'Mr Vampire') that SBS (a free-to-air Australian channel specializing foreign programs) shows some pretty cool and pretty weird. That being said, I watched this not knowing who Takashi Miike was, and ignoring SBS's usual "warning: this program contains material that may disturb some viewers". That was quite the understatement. I reckon 'Fudoh' could disturb most viewers.

When Riki Fudoh (Shosuke Tanihara) was a child, he witnessed his father Iwao Fudoh, a yakuza boss, behead Riki's older brother, Ryu. Ryu has committed crimes against the Yakuza and dishonoured his father, and in such a society, it is Iwao's duty to kill him, regardless of Ryu being his first son. Naturally, this has an impact on Riki. Skip to Riki in high-school, and he is now the boss of his own Yakuza gang, with the intent of taking out the older generation of Yakuza, and destroying the old ways. Only in Japan...

'Fudoh' plays out as quite the violent yakuza drama. It may not have the body-count of a John Woo or Quentin Tarantino movie, but the "controversial violence" of Tarantino's 'Kill Bill' has nothing on this, and I'd be willing that Woo would much prefer to avoid making anything like this. Riki's yakuza gang is made of up teenagers and kids. Very early into the movie, we see some kids (I dare say no older than 8 at the most) pull out their hand-guns and assassinate a rival Yakuza. That I could barely handle, but Miike just goes further and further with some rather unusual acts of violence and very bizarre sex-scenes.

And even through all that, there is still a plot. 'Fudoh' explores the same theme as 'Battle Royale' - the younger generation of Japanese not understanding, or not willing to understand, the long-lasting feudal traditions in Japanese culture. OK, I'll admit that is how I understood it. Maybe I got it wrong, maybe I was just looking for something that wasn't there, but I'm fairly sure that my interpretation is at least somewhat correct. It is easy to overwhelmed by the action on-screen, and I wouldn't be surprised if some people completely missed any theme and left only with the image of someone's brain stuck to a wall.

'Fudoh' is a good movie, but not for the faint of heart. Or most people. In fact, it may be best if only shown to fans of the more violent action movies from Asia - 9/10