Crows Zero (2007)

In the film Crows Zero, Genji Takiya (Shun Oguri), a child from the yakuza boss, moves to Suzuran High School, which is known as a school whose student's main activities are fighting and brawl. This is evident because from the beginning to the end of the film, there is no teaching and learning process that is seen even though they are all high school students and the settings are usually in school. Crows Zero is one of the films that is praised because it can bring a distinctive 'thug' atmosphere because it always has a setting that is tarnished with graffiti and seems slum. Returning to the plot problem, Genji has the goal of becoming number 1 fighter at Suzuran because if he succeeds, his father (the Yakuza boss) will inherit the entire Yakuza organization to him.

Unfortunately, Suzuran is divided into several gangs - gangs who each have bosses who are good at fighting. One of the biggest gangs is Serizawa Army led by Tamao Serizawa (Takayuki Yamada). With the help of a fake yakuza member, Ken Katagiri (Kyosuke Yabe), Genji brings together several gangs belonging to him called GPS (Genji's Perfect Seiha) Army and of course finds himself fighting trial after trial to become number 1 at Suzuran.

This film is not a family-friendly type, there are curses in almost every dialogue and most characters have a rude nature, love violence and can not be separated from cigarettes and alcohol. If you want a quick way to turn a bunch of middle or high school boys into thugs, just set this film. Even though it is famous as a film whose content is only brawl, there is actually a story that has good flow. The actors also live the role of a delinquent with a typical face of a bad boy. Editing sounds are sometimes less subtle, but the rock and punk soundtracks that are owned are enough to leave a deep mark on the inside because they are accompanied by good editing. Given the large number of people who hit each other, the punch effect was perfectly inserted.

If you are the type who likes action movies and likes anime, I would recommend this film. With some typical shounen manga scenes, opening a typical anime with the same soundtrack, and unforgettable characters, Crows Zero is a type of live action from a heavy successful manga.

Fmovies: Great movie, packs japanese teenage angst and pressure in entertaining movie. Great metaphor for school, not unlike Battle Royale.

Some weird humor, many wild fights. Shun Oguri in his greatest role.

This is fully based on style. It's an exploration of what it means, in a certain moment in time, in a certain culture (arguably global...), to be cool.

Everything here is designed to look cool. In fact, whenever we hear about wanting to 'rule' the school, what's in fact at stake is being the coolest there. The fighting is a fundamental issue of that coolness, the best fighters gain admiration, not for their physical skill but for the coolness with what they get out of the situations - even when Genji is defeated after fighting dozens at the same time, he falls in a cool way. To underline this, we come to understand that in fact the strongest guy in the school was in fact away from the main disputes all the way, probably because he is not cool, in the notion of the cool guys (he is cool in his uncool way).

This is a thin notion, which probably will appeal to a teen mind (with 24 i'm not quite sure yet if i've ever been a teen). This film gets away with that single thin notion because it is able to support it visually. The director knows a few things about framing and pace, even though he doesn't take many risks (or none at all) in how he shoots the fights.

In a way, this is no different, in root, of series like Rambo, the filmography of Chuck Norris or the urban hip-hop acting pose. Different moments in time, and different places on earth, and an important element: this film doesn't take itself seriously, as the others do. This is all staged, and that's clear to us, and it's OK. The comedy bits exist to underline this. Also the parody of the Yakuza, as inferior guys who get beaten up by the school kids.

My opinion: 3/5

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Crows Zero fmovies. Crows Zero is a manga adaptation about factions of students fighting for control of a Japanese high school. Not exactly a new idea, as every other anime and manga is about that very subject. But that's not what made Crows so uninteresting to me, I've previously enjoyed many movies and shows with similar plots. My issues with the movie were that I never felt any connection to the characters, and couldn't care less about what happened to them. Add that to the unremarkable fight scenes, and you've got a recipe for "meh". I did appreciate the sporadic humor, but that quickly (and unfortunately) faded away as the movie progressed. 

Die-hard fans of the manga may want to check this out, but I can't recommend that anyone else go out of their way to see it. If you want to see high school students beating each other to a pulp, there are much better (and more exciting) options. 

If you assemble a staff like Takashi Miike, Shun Oguri, and Meisa Kuroki, you can expect a better than average high school drama.

If the story isn't interesting, the mayhem that goes on the screen keeps things going. It's a mindless entertainment, no doubt about that, but it's designed to cater to certain crowd of people that identifies with this sort of story.

Based on a comic by Hiroshi Takahashi, Crows Zero is about Genji Takiya (Shun Oguri) who transfered to Suzuran Boy's School. The school is the lowest grade high school in the province. The students are all delinquents, but Genji is notch above the rest. Nobody has become the top leader in this high school, but maybe Genji will succeed where no one else have in the past.

The story is definitely not for everybody. But if you understand the plot, it's quite entertaining. Director Miike puts in his usual high quality behind the chaotic directing style that he has.

Just don't choose this movie as a one to watch with your girlfriend on a date.

Takashi Miike is an extraordinary filmmaker, even if he works sometimes in circumstances that other directors might find ordinary, such as all of the genres that Miike tackles... which are, by a mild estimation, almost all of them. Name a kind of movie, Miike's probably done it, from family movie to samurai epic to just totally f***ed up way-past X-rated stuff, not to mention all of the Yakuza crime movies that by this time should be coming out of his nose from going over so often. But with Crows: Episode Zero, he found a way to tell a Yakuza story just a little different, by making it about the teenage kids (some of them, anyway) of the Yakuza who enroll in an "extreme" high school where it's basically not about learning anything but fighting and ascending the ranks to become the head of the school's bad-ass fightin' kids. It's the kind of movie that, if you are fourteen and watching it, it's like a near wet-dream of awesomeness. For the rest of us, the movie serves as lots of good fun.

And as this is Miike, even the more conventional things in the movie like the whole 'I'm-doing-this-to-out-impress-my-dad' to the 'my-girl's-been-kidnapped' thing, get twisted just a wee bit. And, thankfully, a great dose of humor is sprinkled throughout with really random moments of hilarity (my favorite was when the teen is just talking to his friends on the roof, and casually takes a gigantic ball of some kind and rolls it away at a set of other kids all lined up like bowling pins who get knocked down in silly CGI style), and little lines and things with the characters (another highlight involves a guy trying to impress two girls in a bar, with some disastrous results). But when it's not being funny, Miike is also an excellent director of young, brawny actors who have a lot of energy and talent to burn. And he casts well enough for its target audience; the movie isn't quite violent enough (i.e. Ichi the Killer level) to make it unwatchable for teen eyes, so all of the guys like Genji and Serizawa are cast for ultimate bad-assitude.

Indeed there are some scenes and moments that come close to being vintage Miike for this kind of tough and gritty action movie. There's a fight scene midway through, for example, that is done with no frills and with total excitement as a guy is fighting against a large group of people, and as it starts to rain and he looks down and out he gets back up and, staggeringly, knocks out almost all of them left. It's visceral things like that that work, but it's also how Miike, taking of course from a comic-book (if it weren't a comic-book one would swear a brilliant and ornery teen had written it), takes material that has originality and pumps it up to the level of an crazy sort of epic. Why this school exists and the parents don't mind sending them away to get the crap kicked out of them in a caste system is beyond me, but why carp? We believe it because Miike does, and gets us into the power struggle and the ascension of Genji, even if it means he might go crazy or if another teen, Tokio, possibly may die from a brain aneurysm.

Then again, the movie also has some problems to it as well. The whole element of the girls being kidnapped could have been cut-out, or at least given with a little more development with the female characters before they're plucked away as a kind of plot convenience (if not contrivance) just so there's something else on the plate of 's***-we-need-to-take-care-of' in the story