Cheap Fudoh - The New Generation (Video) (Takashi Miike) Price

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Customer Reviews of Fudoh - The New Generation

The original Japanese title implies that the whole story is a rewrite of Japan's civil war, but screenwriter Toshiyuki (Onibi: The Fire Within) Morioka paints a very modern drama of murder and mayhem. The eponymous Riki Fudo (played with startling presence by Shosuke Tanihara) is traumatised by the death of his elder brother, and swears revenge on his murderous father.

Gathering his own cohorts about him, Fudo fights a war on two fronts, against both his sworn enemies in Kyushu and his own Dad. Bird People in China director Takashi Miike takes this raw stuff of straight-to-video bargain bins and turns it into a big-screen revenge tragedy worthy of John Woo. Father and son face each other over dinner, each framed by the flames of a Buddhist hell; a blood-red Moon shines on midnight meeting; there is the glint of sharp knives and the flash of even sharper suits.

The influence of this 1996 film is already extensive - it opens with an explosive restroom shoot-out that makes Kite's (1998) seem like a pale imitation, and Shark-Skin Man & Peach-Hip Girl's (1998) seem all the funnier. Exceedingly violent, Fudo never ceases to amaze with its sick originality - highlights include assault with kimchi, a new meaning to the phrase 'dropping acid' and a schoolgirl stripper with an eye-popping party trick. Boasting both the malicious inventiveness of Evil Dead and the honour-among-thieves of Goodfellas, this is one film which (trust me) can't fail to surprise you.

Glossy, high impact shock flick, nothing else
OK, my thoughts are a bit mixed on this one. One hand, you got a somewhat innovative, crazy action thriller.

You got little kids blowing away yakuza with pistols, a young schoolgirl who kills with darts shot from a tube placed inside her vagina(or is it?) and a big sumo-like tough guy who can crush skulls with kicks. It's pure shock, but it's glossier and more innovative than most.

It's also pure gore and plenty of nudity. From crushed skulls and period blood to mindless sex and stripping. Pretty much the outline for any Japanese shock film. So if that's what you're looking for, you've found a good one.

Now on the other hand, the movie suffers from bad characters, awkward dialogue and situations that really don't make sense. Purely abstract and overly poetic. For example, there's one scene where two little kids blow away a yakuza soldier who's walking with his boss. The kids do him in, run out of ammo and the yakuza boss(who should be checking his underwear for a reminder of the shock he just faced) is just looking at the kids, smiling.

The characters are stereotypical extrmes and they're pretty much all stone-cold bad gus who either laugh at death or just don't care-even when it's right in their face. Cheap stuff.

I didn't like Miike's Audition, but character wise and story wise, that blew this one away. But for a glossy, sadistic shocker, this one's right on.

A Revenge Film with Distrubing Moments in Miike Style...
Takeshi Miike is a cinematic visionary who has directed over 50 films and among these most memorable are Audition (2000) and Ichi the Killer (2001). Miike's films often bring the audience into a dark and disturbing world of crime and psychologically distressing themes. In Audition Miike depicts a love story that turns into a carnival of mutilation and degradation in which the audience still can connect with the mutilator. In Ichi the Killer the audience can be forced into a shockingly violent world of crime, but there is a deep sense for the understanding of the characters despite the violence. Miike's absurd fondness for the disturbed and dark shines through in his films, yet each film he directs has a unique touch and offers a new experience. In short, Miike who seems to do nothing but work as he releases film after film, reinvents himself in each film with his own characteristic touch, and each accomplishment leaves a new mark of Miike.

Fudoh: The Next Generation is no exception to Miike's style as it takes on a yakuza revenge story where the young Riki Fudoh (Shosuke Tanihara) is severely traumatized by witnessing the murder of his brother as his father decapitates him in order to please the bosses of the other yakuza families. Riki promises himself to seek revenge on those who ordered the killing of his brother. Ten years later when Riki is in high school he has organized himself with well-trained six-year-old assassins with guns and stun-guns, two lethal high school girls, and a gigantic high school boy that can crush anything with his hands. Riki begins to take on the yakuza killing them off one by one in Miike style, which means that each killing offers a new disturbing experience. The question is can Riki make it, or will he also be a victim for the violence that he breeds around himself. Fudoh: The Next Generation offers an interesting cinematic experience as it offers notions in regards to social learning and violence.