One of Takashi Miike’s early theatrical releases, Fudoh: The New Generation overcomes a tiny budget to showcase Miike’s unparalleled expertise in gratuitous violence, over-the-top storylines and the perverse. Logic and genre expectations take a backseat to insanity, as Fudoh packs in eccentric characters when Riki Fudoh—after witnessing his father kill his brother at the request of the yakuza boss—decides to form his own gang while still in school. Consequential scenes include 5-7 year olds employed as assassins, and a schoolgirl bodyguard who shoots projectiles from her vagina. Miike does not convey any grand meaning in his ‘youth versus elders’ themed pic, but he simply gave the yakuza genre a jolt of creative energy and amusement right when it needed it. While it isn’t perfect in the script department, it’s hard not to like a film that is so upfront about its wild and bizarre turns. For such an early Miike work, it holds up surprisingly well against his later crime films.
Reviewed by Tarun
