First Love

One thing that I love about director Takashi Miike is that you always know what you are going to get with his films. Whether it is a horror movie, dark comedy, or crime thriller, he applies his unique formula brilliantly to everything he creates. First Love is about a low-level gangster (Shota Sometani) who strikes a deal with a corrupt cop to rob his yakuza boss and kick off an elaborate plan to have Chinese gangsters eliminate his competition. A young boxer named Leo (Masataka Kubota) gets involved accidentally when he intervenes in the kidnapping of Yuri (Sakurako Konishi), a young prostitute paying off her father’s debts to the yakuza. Miike delivers the goods with his absurd touches on what is already a pretty fun story. We get a batshit crazy female assassin, a hallucination/ghost that goes from menacing to hilarious, a car used as a weapon multiple times, and a couple of beheadings. For the first time in months, I finally got exactly what I wanted in a movie. If you are a fan of this director’s films, First Love is not to be missed.

[NR]