Kids Return

Masaru and Shinji are not the kind of model pupils who do everything to succeed in Japan’s cutthroat society. When they are at school, they spend most of their time blackmailing fellow pupils or disrupting lessons in a comic and unruly way. However they are more often seen in bars talking about nothing in particular. When the sturdiest of the two, Masaru, is beaten up one day, he decides to take up boxing. Shinji follows his friend meekly and soon turns out to have the necessary talent. He may become a professional boxer and maybe even a champion. In a sparring bout provoked by Masaru, Shinji knocks his friend out. The ambitious Masaru decides to stop boxing and embark on a rapid career with the local Yakuza.The mixture of irony and melancholy with which Kitano looks at the lives of both adolescents is reminiscent of his earlier A Scene at the Sea. The dynamics of the boxing school, supported by the beautiful techno-percussion music of Joe Hishaishi, is the dynamic of hope. But the film gradually becomes a distressing story of missed opportunities in which clinging onto dreams doesn’t offer any solace. Tony Rayns: ‘The question they have to answer is not how to die but – much harder – how to live on.’