This is based on a Manga by Matsumoto Taiyo which I would like to check out, as it has to be as disturbing as this film. In an all boys high school it is the students who rule, even chasing teachers out of the school, and what can the teachers do about it. This is the story of disaffected youths, and a power struggle within the school with violent results. The film doesn’t have too much character build up, but does have some very cool shots, and good music as well.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…

Kujo (Matsuda Ryuhei) takes over as Boss of the school in his senior year, by hanging from the railing at the top and dropping back and clapping 8 times before catching. The one who gets the most is the boss. His only friend is Aoki, who wants him to show they are boss and take over the school by force, but Kujo has no idea what he wants and mostly stands up at the top of the school smoking, or sometimes kicking around a soccer ball or talking to a midget who plants the flowers outside of the graphitied and battered high school (do all high schools in Japan have about 4 floors and a roof you can go up on? Seems like it). All the students are disaffected. The top baseball player loses his big game and ends up quitting school and joining the yakuza. A guitar player kills his friend who is friends of a boss in a gang that wants to take over the school, stabbing him again and again with a steak knife we see coming through the wall with blood. Aoki is getting picked on by the juniors who want to be boss, and Kujo won’t do anything about it. So they quarrel and Aoki leaves and comes back looking like a bad ass, and with 2 junior flunkies terrorizing the school, and he starts to spray-paint everything black, even his own shadow in a drawing like the one Kujo did on his desk. Aoki spends the night attop the school and in one time lapse shot we see it get dark, go through night and become morning. Kujo sees him on the roof and runs, but as he reaches the roof Aoki does 13 claps as he falls to his death.

I like how the extreme violence is kept off screen, where we only see the bloody aftermath, and it lends itself well to the style and to the touch characters. I love Kujo and Aoki’s inevitable showdown where Kujo walks up and lights his cigarette off of Aoki’s and they fight grabbing each other’s hair and beating on each other. Two completely dysfunctional kids with no idea what to do.