Miike Takashi, Japan’s King of Cult, used to claim in interviews that he was perfectly happy to make zero budget straight-to-video pics about gangsters and other disreputable types - more freedom, he’d say, to let his formidable imagination run wild. Then he made One Missed Call, a 2004 J Horror about teens who receive cell phone messages fortelling their own deaths. Earning $14.5 million at the Japanese box office, it became his first mainstream hit and inspired a Hollywood remake.
After that Miike made other pics for the multiplexes, including The Great Yokai War (2005) and Sukiyaki Western Django (2007), but with Crows - Episode 0 (Crows Zero) he hit the box office jackpot. Released n October 2007 by Toho, Crows grossed $24 million - in other words, about as much as Miike’s first fifty films put together.
This career BO high is not a career sell-out - Crows is stylistically still Miike in every frame. Also the story about punks who live to brawl and brawl the way they breathe - naturally and without a moment’s hesitation - will be familiar to fans of the Miike’s three Young Thugs pics from the 1996 to 1998 about dropouts, layabouts and gangsters-in-training in the rough Kishiwada section of Osaka.
So why the big jump in numbers? Takahashi Hiroshi's long-running comic on which the film is based has a large and loyal fan base. Also, main cast members, including Oguri Shun and Yamada Takayuki, are hot young stars with large followings among women who would ordinarily rather undergo root canal that watch a movie about teenage badasses punching the bejeesus out of each other.
Finally, everything from the artfully distressed clothes and touseled hair of the heroes to the kick-ass techno-rock soundtrack, spells cool as currently defined, though Miike’s scruffy punks from Kishiwada might beg to differ.
The setting is Suzuran Boys High School, an educational establishment where gangs rule the halls, graffiti decorates the walls and the teachers, after cowering through a first-day-of-school assembly, make themselves scarce. Into this maelstrom swaggers Genji Takaya (Oguri), a transfer student, whose father (Goro Kishitani), a Suzuran alumni, is a yakuza gang boss. Genji is not insane, but ambitious -- he wants to do what his old man never could: Unite the school's perpertually warrring gangs and emege as the capo di tutti capi -- the boss of all bosses
He soon learns that his rival for supremecy is Serizawa Tamao (Yamada), the school's numero uno fighter and boss of its biggest gang.
Before he can face off mano a mano against Serizawa for control of the school, however, Geni must fight many a brawl - not all of which he wins. He finds an unexpected ally in Katagiri Ken (Yabe Kyosuke), another Suzuran alumini turned yakuza, whose gang is a rival to that of Genji's dad. Ken sees Genji as his last, best chance to relive his high school glory days - and this time come out on top. It's somewhat pathetic, this dream, but Ken is completely sincere - and willing to prove it with his life, if need be.
The film is not entirely one tough guy whaling on another. Genji is attracted to Ruka (Kuroki Meisa), a sultry club singer, but their romance is short circuited when Ruka is kidnapped - and Genji has to rides to the rescue.
Miike's Hollywood-style fast cuting and strobing of the aciton sequences may not please fans of the raw aesthetic of the "Young Thugs" films, whose idea of a big effect was a iron plate to the skull. Those looking for classic Miike outrages may be disappointed as well: No one will run from the theater retching. Miike, however, still delivers his patented brand off bad-boy violence and black humor, if with handsomers actors than usual.
Mark Schilling