christopher-underwood
As always Takashi films are difficult to sum up in a few words. Yes very violent, but not gut wrenchingly so, because of the over the top nature and comic side (both manga and funny!) more sex than usual, although not erotic, of course. For the record we have a lady yakuza member whose tattoo only appears as her body heats up, killer schoolgirls (including one who fires darts from down below!) and an hermaphrodite schoolgirl. A little confusing at first but it soon settles down to revenge and then revenge etc. The major twist is father killing son and vice versa + the use of children as killers. Violent fun most of the way and always looking good this maybe is not as tight as some of his others.
Nicholas Phillips
Little Riki Fudoh (Shosuke Tanihara) plays catch with his older brother, who is also ordering a hit by phone, in the well-manicured backyard of their father's Kobe estate. Meanwhile, a gap-toothed old gaijin, and his swimming goggles-wearing Japanese partner, pour bullet after bullet through bathroom stall doors into Nohma family drug dealers. In retaliation, Daigen Nohma orders and receives the assassins' heads. At Nioh Temple (aka. "Dope Temple"), father Iwao Fudoh and his allied gang bosses hold a tense meeting. That night, Iwao beheads Riki's older brother in his sleep in hope of averting a full-scale gang war.Ten years pass. Riki reminds his father in front of the family shrine of the anniversary of his brother's death. Iwao is meeting the mayor and couldn't care less, but Riki has already set his plans in motion. Old Ryuji Komoku, one of Iwao's four fellow executives, returns to his car from morning batting practice to find two children playing the crane game for prizes. As he berates them for skipping school, they pull out guns and shoot him and his bodyguards to death. That night, Akira Jikoku, another executive, is traveling handcuffed in the back of a squad car with two detectives. As they stop at a gas station, he smugly assures them that the arrest is futile. Mika, a perky girl dressed as an attendant, delivers them "complimentary coffee." The coffee is poisoned and Akira dies vomiting up great gouts of blood. She strips off the disguise and, in her sailor fuku, quickly walks off.The next day, a giant of a man beats up a yakuza pimp, instead of paying for the hooker he injured with his "eggplant dick," and rides his motorcycle to school. Mika-the-murderous- schoolgirl sharpens a dart in English class. An abusive English teacher meets Riki after class and begs him to accept partial repayment for loaned drugs. Riki throws the money on the floor and tells his teacher to commit suicide. Flanked by young yakuza, Riki dominates nightlife in the Nakasu district and impresses the giant. Mika works nights at a strip club popping balloons with her vagina-powered blowgun. The male voice of club techno repeatedly enjoins, "Just do that thing." She fires a dart that flies in one ear and out the other, pinning a bit of boss Tenkai Zocho's brain to wall.As the following day dawns, a second schoolgirl assassin posing as a holy water delivery girl empties her MAC10 (with silencer and extended magazine) on Bishamon Tobatsu and his underlings. Back at school, the giant confronts Riki and takes a menstrual fluid coated blow dart to the hand. He joins up. Riki shows his new friend their training ground at the railroad tracks, where little boys play soccer with the English teacher's head. Under cover of night, Riki and his gang wipe out the surviving clan leaders at Dope Temple. Iwao begins working covertly with Nohma to kill his son. When Riki's two little boys botch the assassination of Nohma, who turns them into a pair of loosely tied garbage bags. Iwao has his half-Korean bastard son, Akihiro Gondo, infiltrate the school as a new teacher.The giant's bike explodes when he turns the key in the ignition, hospitalizing him. Gondo disarms the gun-toting schoolgirl and fatally defenestrates her. A female substitute teacher reveals to the depressed genital circus performer that she used to be the girlfriend of Riki's older brother. Mika reveals that she is actually a hermaphrodite. Having commiserated, they copulate. The next night, while Mika performs, Gondo sets off an acid trap rigged to the ceiling, hospitalizing and permanently disfiguring her. Riki enters Gondo's apartment and learns the truth, but Gondo nearly kills him. Riki is saved by his brother's ex-girlfriend and her laser-sighted Desert Eagle magnum handgun. When Iwao tries to decapitate Riki, who was pretending to sleep, Riki grabs the blade and declares, "The era of a child sacrificing himself for a parent is over." Iwao pulls a revolver and lands all six bullets on Riki's chest, but Riki was wearing body armor. Riki then beheads his father. Now in charge of what's left of the Fudoh family, Riki ignites the gang war with Nohma that his brother tried to spark.
miztachris
Although this was his first hit, this is not Miike's best. It lacks the humanity of Blues Harp and the Shinjuku Triad Society trilogy, but is squeezed full of imaginative violence and wicked slaughter.This is the closest Miike has ever got to making a Fukasaku film, which is not in itself a good thing - Miike is, in terms of strings to his bow, a superior director to Fukasaku, whose films are shallow and hectic marathons of murder. FUDOH is an enjoyable romp, but offers little more than a quick blast of action and horror. It is as wooden and cartoon-like as The City of Lost Souls - an arguably superior picture - and as blackly vicious (as well as less confused and one-dimensional) as Battle Royale. An ideal film if you're looking for some no-holds-barred carnage, and you're bored of John Woo's endless slo-mo.7/10
jtourbro
How can you not love this movie? If you have any sense of humor you'll love this completely over-the-top far-out yakuza-high school flick. It's about the young Fudoh taking on the established yakuza with a ragtag band of hitmen. They include a school girl with a vaginal blowpipe (has to be seen to be believed!), and two little kids who has to shoot back-to-back because the recoil would otherwise knock them over. The film has a high tempo and constantly surprises and amazes. If you haven't seen any of Miikes films this is a great place to start, and if you have you've got to see this right away!9/10
