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| FUDOH, THE NEW GENERATION. Starring - Shosuke Tanihara - Riki Takeuchi - Marie Jinno - Toru Minegishi. Director - Takashi Miike. 1996. A dealer working on behalf of Ryu Fudoh of the Nioh family is murdered by rivals from the Yasha group. Ryu is not best pleased by the actions of the Yasha group and so orders a revenge attack on there own dealer. This displeases the hierarchy of the Nioh group, as they fear now that an all out war between the two groups will commence. In order to prevent this it is left in the hands of Ryu’s father to offer penance. Mr Fudoh is only too willing to oblige and quickly offers up the decapitated head of Ryu in atonement. Horrifically the youngest Fudoh family member Riki witnesses Ryu’s decapitation, which leaves him slightly emotionally, unbalanced. Ten years later and Riki is a model student with perfect grades at the local Nakasu Commercial high school, but beneath this polished veneer lies a bitter and twisted murderer hell-bent on revenge. No longer will Riki put up with the old Yakuza and their old traditions as he begins to embark on his quest to replace them with the new generation. Funnily enough I am actually going through the Takashi Miike catalogue backwards, I found after seeing Battle Royale I wanted more. Now I find every time I load a Takashi Miike movie into my player I start to feel a sense of anticipation. I begin to wonder just what bizarre wonders lie ahead and also as to how I will react to them. In this case I found myself laughing out loud (I know I shouldn’t) as the hermaphrodite pussy blowing dart killer (quite a mouthful) claims another victim, chortling inanely as Touko Zenzai urinates uncontrollably all over her assailant and babbling incoherently as the pre school assassins play football with the English teachers head. Films weren’t like this when I was a kid. I now rate Takeshi Miike as one of the best directors around simply because everything he has done has left some sort of impression upon me, each one of his movies has at least one truly memorable scene and in Fudoh’s case there are many. Whilst not being the most overdeveloped plot of all time Fudoh certainly has something special about it. It is not the fine performances throughout or the occasional pant wetting one liners, it is not even the fine cinematography as supplied by Hideo Yamamoto. Far from it, it is the actual characters themselves that really makes this movie shine, trust me you haven’t seen anything until you’ve seen this bunch of dysfunctional misfits on screen. They are all compelling viewing and each one is like oral sex whilst drunk. Totally captivating but slightly dangerous… think about it :) The one major downside to Fudoh though is the abrupt ending, I know this was done for the sake of the 2 sequels but these could still have been achieved without sacrificing what could have been a spectacular finale. Fudoh was originally planned as a straight to video movie release, but after production was finished the company began to realise just what they had on their hands and decided to unleash this beast on an unprepared audience. The ratings board also unprepared for the levels of violence portrayed by children instantly took the high moral ground that guarantees a movie publicity and success. It also propelled Takashi Miike to the forefront of Japanese movie making. Hoorah! 8*******stars. |
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