Fudoh: The New Generation

Toronto International Film Festival Program Guide
1997

Fudoh: The New Generation
Takashi Miike
JAPAN, 1996
99 minutes Colour/35mm
Production Company: Gaga Communications/Excellent Films
Executive Producer: Hiroshi Yamaji
Producer: Yoshinori Chiba, Toshiki Kimura
Screenplay: Tosiyuki Morioka
Cinematographer: Hideo Yamamoto
Production Designer: Akira Ishige
Music: Chu Ishikawa
Principal Cast: Shosuke Tanihara, Kenji Takano, Marie Jinno, Tamaki Kenmochi, Miho Nomoto

Yakuza films rarely get this good. Fudoh: The New Generation is an astonishingly violent, beautifully directed and utterly amoral tribute to a new generation of gangsters; it also marks the arrival of a major new talent on the fertile Japanese commercial film scene. Director Takashi Miike elegantly balances epic cinematography with self-conscious transgression and never lets the action stop for a second. He is ably assisted by an excellent cast of unknowns who internalize Takashi’s razor-sharp, dark vision.

Ricki Fudoh is a good student and considered a handsome, well-rounded teenage guy. But a nastier side lurks within. He is haunted by the spectre of his dead brother, murdered by his sadistic father, a Yakuza crime lord. Out of a deep lust for revenge, Ricki assembles a gang of killers from his school and begins a series of imaginative and brutal killings of the old school crime bosses. Machinations within the various gang factions create a massive war in which all sides suffer heavy and unexpectedly creative casualties. With the streets in chaos, a final confrontation between father and son is inevitable.

While it would spoil the fun to give away the film’s most outré moments—and there are many—a special mention must be made of Fudoh’s (teenage) female lieutenant and her zip-lined panties, pea-shooter dagger and quite extraordinary muscle control.

Fudoh is full of subtly-deployed visual and narrative quotes. Lead actor Shosuke Tanihara is a terrifyingly icy presence, reminiscent of Alain Delon’s Le Samourai, while the film’s fetishistic stance around tattoos and quirky sex is all Japanese. Fudoh is simply a must-see feast for all devotees of cinema’s darkest and most perverse representations.
—Noah Cowan