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Most mainstream Hollywood films stick to a single genre—romance or fantasy or action. But with First Love, prolific Japanese director Takashi Miike takes a bunch of styles and genres and mixes them into an outrageously twisting film about one wild night in Tokyo.
First Love follows young boxer Leo (Masataka Kubota) as he gets caught up in an unexpected adventure. After he’s knocked out during a fight, he receives some unwelcome news from a doctor. As he’s pondering the diagnosis—and the words of a street psychic—his world collides with that of Monica (Sakurako Konishi), a girl who’s been sold by her abusive father to pay off his debts. And when he makes the split-second decision to help this frightened girl, he ends up caught in the middle of a battle between drug dealers, corrupt cops, and the Yakuza.
First Love is a twisted, complex film, tying in multiple groups of characters in tenuous alliances. Though Leo and Monica may be caught in the middle of it all, there’s a whole lot of drug-dealing, corruption, and double-crossing playing out around them. On one hand, that keeps the action moving along from shootout to car chase to sword fight—from one brutal death to another. On the other hand, though, it makes for an extremely complicated film—and it can be quite challenging to try to follow the action and figure out all of the characters and their relationships while also keeping up with the subtitles. This is far from a straightforward action movie. Instead, the director brings in touches of drama and fantasy, a hint of romance, and plenty of comedy, too, to keep the often frantic pace.
Meanwhile, Leo and Monica are stuck in the middle yet set apart—a couple of innocent young people caught up in a world that they don’t really understand. Monica has been pushed down, abused, and controlled all her life. She suffers from hallucinations because of the drugs she takes to forget—yet she still holds on to the memory of the one person who stood up for her. Leo, meanwhile, is a lonely young man with nothing to lose—and when he meets Monica, he decides that it’s time to fight for someone else for a change. These two may be the quietest, most low-key members of the cast, but that makes them stand out in the midst of the noise and the over-the-top violence.
There’s definitely a lot going on in this uncommon crime thriller—which means that it takes some effort to follow along with all of the characters, the alliances, and the interactions. But if you’re willing to give it a chance, you’ll be rewarded with high energy, some outrageous action, and a message or two, too.
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