Never one to make a movie that is not extreme,
Takashi Miike's Fudoh - The New Generation is a bizarre Yakuza movie with all of the
gore, perversions and misfit characters that we would expect from this acclaimed director who never shy’s away from pushing the limits of decency. Fudoh is considered to be Miike's first movie to successfully cross-over to the West, which is surprising as he pulls no punches with this obscene piece of cinema.
Riki Fudoh is the son of a powerful gangster, Iwao Fudoh, in the Nioh gang. The Nioh gang is on the verge of a war with the Yasha gang due to a mistake made by Riki's older brother. Iwao does not hesitate to decapitate his eldest son to maintain the uneasy truce between the gangs but unknown to him, Riki witnesses the murder and vows to seek revenge against his father for the beheading of his sibling. Determined to right this wrong, Riki begins to form his own gang at school and begins to undermine the established gangs by taking out the "big four" of the Nioh gang with the help of his gang of murderous freaks, a gun-toting female student, a hermaphrodite student skilled in shooting deadly accurate darts from her vagina and a gang of vicious under twelve’s, plus the new boy at school, the long haired seven-foot man-mountain.
No one suspects that Riki is behind the murders and the rival gangs truce looks set to breakdown and end in a gang war. All of this is how Riki planned but his ultimate goal is to make his father pay for the death of his older brother. After Riki kills a teacher for not paying back some drug money, a sexy new female teacher arrives at his school, she is not all she seems and she knows that Riki is involved in the death of the Nioh gang "big four". It becomes apparent that she was the girlfriend of Riki's murderer brother and she wants in on the action.
By this time Iwao suspects that his younger son is out to get him and gets in contact with the half-brother that Riki does not know exists. The half-brother joins the school as the new gym teacher and plans to kill Riki after taking out his bodyguards. He successfully incapacitates the bodyguards but fails to kill Riki.
Iwao decides that he must deal with Riki himself and attempt to decapitate him in the same manner with which he disposed of his other son. Riki is prepared and soon his gang becomes a force to be reckoned with in the constant gang wars.
There are a number of
shocking scenes in this movie above and beyond the
blood and violence, the dart throwing student firing darts during her period, the discovery that she has both sets of genitalia and the fact that this does not put off the new female teacher from making dirty love to her... it... whatever..., the gang leader that drinks the acid, well the list goes on but this is exactly what we expect from Takashi Miike. This story is not just out for shocks though, there is a solid storyline underpinning the visual atrocities and the characters, although unusual, are deep and have complex interactions creating an affinity between the viewer an their bizarre personalities.
Once again
Takashi Miike has dared to go where few other directors would go and pulls it off combining shock, horror, very dark humor and a moving emotional undertone in a way that only he could, bringing a solid piece of fiction to the lovers of the extreme.