Crows Zero is an action movie which is based on "crows" manga. In this movie there is a violent high school named "Suzuran". The students makes their own group/gang and fight each other to be the head, the main boss/leader of that high school. One day a High Schooler as a transferred senior come to the Suzuran high school with a aim to conquer the whole school. He is the main character of the movie and his name is Takiya Genji (Shun Oguri)the son of a Yakuza boss named Takiya Hideo. During the freshman orientation assembly Yakuza arrive at the school seeking third-year senior Serizawa Tamao to avenge an injury.To show his worth, Genji fights and defeats the Yakuza, who mistake him for Tamao.

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.

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. And the climax of the film, imbued with a real epic sensibility with Genji and Serizawa fighting in a big battle with nearly a hundred students on each side to fight, stumbles a bit as its moments of raw power and energy are awkwardly cut with images of the one guy getting operated on in the hospital - it lacks tension or focus except that surgery is going on, who cares, lets get back to the wicked action - and as well a ballad sung by a woman (we see her singing on stage too) and the fighting done in slow motion. It's almost as if Miike goes too far in his excesses in this whole sequence, and ultimately half of it is really great and the other half is just... lame.But for any fan of the director's, or anyone looking for a kooky take on rebellious youth in Japan who are only a couple of steps removed from a Battle Royale scenario, it's a good ticket to take. There's tight acting and (mostly) hard-rocking Japanese punk tunes, and the action is often creative and engaging.

One of my favorite Japanese movie series of the 80s was Nasu Hiroyuki's absurdly violent "Be-Bop High School" which was based on Kiyuchi Kazuhiro's popular manga series which ran in "Weekly Young Jump" from 1983. It was outrageously violent and portrayed high school life as a battlefield, where personal combat was a means to prove a teen's worth and masculinity. Enter Miike Takashi's recent "Crows Zero" which almost plays like an updated version of "Be-Bop High School" albeit with his own unique flourishes and stylistic nuances. Based on Takahashi Hiroshi's gritty comic series "Crows" which runs in the "Monthly Shonen Champion" magazine, the movie follows the exploits of Takiya Genji, the son of a high ranking Yakuza gang-lord, who has transferred into the notorious high school Suzuran.Suzuran's student body has the unique distinction of being the most violent, lawless and brutal. Formal education is the least of the worries at the school as daily classes are almost non-existent and students spend most of the time either fighting with each other or allying themselves with the various factions that control the school.The top "A" class comprises of allies of the current king of the school, Serizawa Tamao(Yamada Takeyuki) who is the so-called "Hyaku Jyu Oh" (King of the Hundred Beasts) for his ferocity and strength in fights. Despite his baby faced good looks and somewhat goofy personality, he is ruthlessly determined to keep his top position at whatever costs and beats down all challengers to his throne.A new transfer student, Genji Takaya (Oguri Jun) has just entered the school and begins to make a name for himself, first by beating up a group of Yakuza who had a run in with Serizawa and then by beating a leading school warlord, Tamamura "Chuta" (Suzunosuke) to take over his class. One of the Yakuza thugs sent after Serizawa, Katagiri Ken (Yabe Kyosuke), himself a former dropout from Suzuran, takes Genji under his wing and offers to teach him how to become the new king of the school, an achievement that Genji hopes will eclipse his father's reputation and give him lasting fame.Together with Chuta, they begin to unite the other warring school factions in an effort to strike at Serizawa's class. Genji's allies include the dim-witted yet fiercely loyal Makise Takashi (Takahashi Tsutomu) and the brutal and calculating Izaki Jun (Takaoka Sousuke).Genji's ambitions bring him into conflict not only with former schoolmate Tatsukawa Tokio (Kiritani Kenta), who has become Serizawa's right hand man but also endangers the life of beautiful hip-hop singer Aizawa Ruka (Kuroki Meisa) a childhood friend, who is in love with the "bad boy".While Fudo Shugo's lively and energized script clearly draws inspiration from Takahashi's manga, it seems to also draw heavily from other similar high school delinquent manga-turned-films like "Be-Bop High School", "Rokudenashi Blues" and "Sakigake! Otokojuku". There also seems to be elements reminiscent of Walter Hill's rock-n-roll fairy tale "Streets of Fire" (1984), particularly with regards to the romance between Genji's character and Aizawa.Miike's direction is wickedly entertaining in its outrageousness and eye-catching style. Miike never fails to make visually interesting films and "Crows Zero" is no exception. Make no mistake, "Crows Zero" is a guy's film and it is filled with testosterone pumped action and showy machismo almost to a comical level. Yet, Miike surprisingly also inserts some genuinely nice and moving moments particularly involving the complicated relationships between the various characters.Miike's young cast is superb and does an awesome job as bringing Takahashi's exaggerated characters to life.Oguri Jun (GTO TV Series, Azumi, RoboCon) is mesmerizing in his role as Genji. His action scenes are terrific and he brings a devilish charm to his character. Yamada Takeyuki (Dragonhead, Maiko Haaan) is also very charming in his role as Serizawa. He is not your typical villainous thug and in fact is quite likable despite his character's actions (very similar to Russell Crowe's Ben Wade character in "3:10 To Yuma). The stunning Okinawan beauty Kuroki Meisa (Camus Nante Shiranai, Vexille) does terrific work in her small part and also gets to showoff her talents as a singer. Yabe Kyosuke (Sukiyaki Western Django, Kids Return, Dead or Alive) is another standout as the bumbling Yakuza Katagiri. Yabe brings much heart and sympathy to his character and one can't help but feel for him as he tries to live his life's dream of conquering the Suzuran vicariously through Genji.The punk rock soundtrack is appropriately loud and infectious as is Kuroki's R&B, Hip-Hop numbers. "Crows Zero" is not for everyone and its over-the-top story won't win any awards but for your average male movie-going demographic, it is an absolute winner which is sure to please.