Fudoh: The New Generation

To avenge his older brother’s murder at the hands of his yakuza boss father, a high school student sets up his own crime syndicate, composed entirely of children. Three years before Audition, this wildly inventive romp first put Miike Takashi’s name on the map.

High school student Riki Fudoh leads a double life in organised crime. With his gang of underage assassins (including five-year olds with handguns and a teenage stripper who shoots deadly darts from an unexpected orifice) he aspires to take over criminal affairs on Japan’s southern island of Kyushu. But Fudoh’s true motivations are not just a lust for power: as a child he witnessed the grisly murder of his older brother at the hands of his yakuza boss father and he swore revenge.

From this Shakespearean premise flow forth buckets of blood as Riki and the kids commence an assassination campaign against the top figures of the local underworld, with the patriarch as the ultimate target. Like a manga sprung to life, this day-glo coloured gangland parody is all gleefully executed excess, directed by a young and eager Miike Takashi at his most outrageous. Fudoh ended up in TIME Magazine’s top 10 films of the year, resulting in Miike being invited to join Francis Ford Coppola and Wayne Wang’s sadly aborted Chrome Dragon project.

– Tom Mes

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