ROMANCE ON THE RUN IN ‘FIRST LOVE’
Japanese director Takashi Miike grinds out so many films — at least two to three per year, sometimes with such lurid, pulpy titles as “Over Your Dead Body,” “Yakuza Apocalypse” and “13 Assassins” — that it’s tempting to think he’s soon going to run out of ideas and will just start releasing his home movies. His imdb.com filmography list is probably longer than some novels.
Well, he doesn’t have to worry about that just yet. His latest, the blandly titled “First Love,” his 104th film, is as maniacally entertaining as much of his previous work. Based on a script by Masa Nakamura and set in the contemporary Japanese underworld, the serpentine plot boils down to this: Two people — Monica (Sakurako Konishi), a drug-addicted sex slave escaping from a corrupt cop, and Leo (Masataka Kubota), a young boxer who comes to her rescue — find themselves on the run from low-rent hoods, the Yakuza, Chinese gangsters and the police. It seems as if every criminal in Japan wants to find a missing shipment of drugs that they believe Monica and Leo know something about.
He was recently given a dire diagnosis that meant the end of his boxing career. Her future looked similarly bleak. But, together, they may just find hope in each other, if they can survive the likes of such cold-blooded killers as Kase (Shôta Sometani) and his criminal cohorts to whom he has fleeting loyalties.
Often darkly funny, “First Love” is also very violent, and it’s not just about gunplay. There’s a beheading in the movie’s first few minutes just to let everyone know, if they’ve somehow forgotten, that they’ve walked into a Takashi Miike film.
Certainly, “First Love” isn’t for everyone. Anyone who doesn’t appreciate noir-ish, gangland thrillers that have their tongues firmly in cheek may not have the patience to unravel Miike’s dense,
character-rich film, which takes a while to get going.
But a Takashi Miike film is kind of like the weather. If you don’t like it, just wait a few minutes, and there will be a new one.
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