The hero of Miura Daisuke’s Boys On The Run is rank-and-file salesman Tanishi (Mineta Kazunobu), who spends his days filling vending machines with trinkets, masturbating to porn videos and obsessing on Chiharu (Kurokawa Mei), a pretty co-worker. A virgin of 29, still living at home with Mom and Dad, Tanishi knows he is a big zero.
But within this google-eyed, simpering dweeb beats the heart of a lover and even a fighter. When a rival salesman, the smooth, handsome, unprincipled Aoyama (Matsuda Ryuhei), snatches Chiharu away from him (incredibly she has started to reciprocate his interest), Tanishi is stirred to frustration - and finally rage. But before he can deliver a promised thrashing to Aoyama, he has to train, since he has never thrown a punch in anger in his life. Cue the Rocky theme...
Based on a comic by Hanazawa Kengo, Boys On The Run is in the all-but-exhausted genre of slacker comedy, but Miura, a theater director turned indie filmmaker, has a unique comic mind.
His style is on the dry, understated side (After Tanishi’s trainer, an alcoholic senior salesman, gives him pointers on his boxing stance, he leaves the poor mope standing frozen, like a department store dummy, while he sips his beer), but he also revels in down-and-dirty realism, from sleazy sex to brutal punch-ups, while rejecting any hints of softness or sentimentality. A punk rocker off-screen (his band Ging Nang Boyz supplies the closing song), Mineta Kazunobu implicitly understands this side of Miura, while keeping the audience on Tanishi’s side. We laugh at him and his sorry situation with sympathy, not contempt.
Miura also has his own sense of timing, delivering his punch lines and pay-offs at odd moments and angles - and getting bigger laughs as a result. The ending is no exception. You don’t see it coming - but Miura has been setting it up from scene one. It’s right, it’s satisfying - and it’s not Rocky in the least. It’s Boys On The Run.
Mark Schilling