The Miike man delivers again in the awesomely bizarre boxing movie Blazing Fists, directed by legendary Japanese cult movie director Takashi Miike. Written by Shin Kibayashi, Ikuto Yagura (Danhi Kinoshita), and Ryoma Akai (Kaname Yoshizawa) meet at a Juvenile Detention Center in Tokyo. Ikuto informs Ryoma that he is innocent, that he was framed for a mugging carried out by someone else wearing a green hoodie like his. Ikuto says that when he finds the person who really did it, he is going to beat him to a bloody pulp. And Ikuto can fight like a m**********r, as he was thrown in for winning a fight against six at once. This means Ryoma has a secret he needs to guard with his life: that he was the mugger in the green hoodie that night Ikuto was framed.
Ryoma lets Ikuto know about the biggest new thing Ikuto has missed out on while being locked up: the show Breaking Out. It is a short, one-round, winner-take-all, mixed martial arts fight, usually between juvenile delinquents. When the boys get out, they are picked up by Ikuto’s mom, Haruka (Mariko Shinoda), and Ryoma’s mom, Kaoruko (Anna Tsuchiya). Ikuto goes to see his dad, Daisuke (Katsunori Takahashi), who is being held while awaiting trial for murder. Daisuke tells his son he is innocent, that he had been called to the home of a suicidal employee, whom he didn’t stop from cutting her own throat in time. However, Japan has a 99% criminal conviction rate, so the odds are stacked against Ikuto’s dad. The boys join a gym to start training for the show, but they have drawn the attention of the wicked Krishnas motorcycle gang led by the evil Shizuka Mido (Gackt). The fighting begins long before anyone enters the ring and never stops.
Legends tend to fade into the same thin air they came out of. We have these geniuses burst onto the scene, doing s**t no one has ever seen before, then years later settling into cranking out the same stuff that they were battling against back when. So it is a matter of worldwide importance that Takashi Miike still has it. He has all the extreme tricks up his sleeve that caused him to twist so many heads around. True story: Back in Austin, I was handed a bootleg tape of Audition before it was released in the US. It took me seven months to get through it. I watched the first 45 minutes, during which nothing really happens, and gave up on it.
“… Yagura and Ryoma Akai meet at a Juvenile Detention Center in Tokyo …”
Months later, Audition became a breakout horror hit in the art houses, so I popped the tape back in to see why. That’s when I was given my first dose of the Miike magic, that diabolical splash of extremity that splits the screen open. With a roster of some of the most outlandishly vicious movies ever made, it would be easy to assume Miike has to eventually mellow out with age. And the trailer for Blazing Fists, focusing on the mixed martial art fight scenes, looks like a movie that is square as a county sheriff’s deputy with a Wiffle ball haircut. Don’t be fooled, as this is far from an ordinary boxing movie.
Blazing Fists is much more The Warriors than Rocky II. The only thing different from his earlier classics is that Miike seems to get getting slicker on the non-weird bits. The notorious slow-burning pacing, with it taking 40 minutes to make it to the boxing gym, is filled with some very decent character building and plot setup. Then everything starts getting more and more crazy, with the violence getting bloodier and more unusual. By the time we get to the impossibly vicious finale, Miike takes the boxing movie concept and re-wires it into a berserker ballroom riot.
All audience expectations are dashed under a tidal wave of something better than you could imagine. Miike also keeps those well-timed comic moments that make the proceedings extra sick, both the old and new meanings of the phrase. He also knows when to put the pedal to the metal on the music scoring. There are many very metal moments in the movie that have real metal playing behind them. The dominant flavor, though, is punk. Miike has always been Japan’s most punk rock director, as he breaks rules constantly to create thunderbolts of extremity. Blazing Fists shows that after all these decades, this director’s brand of cinematic anarchy remains untarnished. Thanks to Miike, punk is alive and is living well in Japan.
"…Miike takes the boxing movie concept and re-wires it into a berserker ballroom riot"
