Review: Takashi Miike's Blazing Fists.

Blazing Fists is a 2025 action film directed by the prolific Takashi Miike and is based off Mikuru Asakura's autobiography Street Legend. The film stars Danhi Kinoshita, Kaname Yoshizawa, and Chikashi Kuon. Additional roles include Asakuru himself and music icon Gackt. Lightish spoilers ahead.

The film revolves around two juvenile center inmates turned best friends Ikuto Yagura (Kinoshita) and Ryoma Akai (Yoshizawa) who dream of competing in a martial arts event titled Break Down, though villains of their past (Kuon and Gackt) attempt to derail their goal.

Blazing Fists was an incredible comeback film for me, I have been sick and dying all week and have spent a large majority of my time watching Black Lagoon and regrettably Bulletproof Monk, which I'm certain the film only made me feel even sicker.

To me, Blazing Fists is what I wanted First Love to be, a film that balances the humanity of the characters, the story, and the action without losing out on on one aspect or the other. While First Love isn't a bad movie, I outright prefer Blazing Fists over it.

I don't think this film has one specific great strength, out of the three I listed I think this film handled all three perfectly. The characters feel not only human, but they have layers to them. The story kept me invested from beginning to end. The action was some of the best I've seen from Miike's films up to this point.

Yagura in the beginning is plagued by his father's imprisonment and the reputation it gives him and, in addition to false imprisonment and wanting to pulverize the man who framed him, it gives his character a perfect recipe to be a vile and aggressive delinquent, but instead he uses it more or less as motivation to better himself and to pull himself out of the hole he was in.

And in contrast, Kishomaru (Kuon's character) is the antithesis of Yagura. He is the stereotypical high school delinquent you would see only in a manga, he's violent, he's crass, he has his own entourage of other violent delinquents tagging alongside him.

Despite his character being made out to be unlikable, as the film's runtime ran on I could only find myself liking him more than I did Ryoma, he was deeper than I expected him to be, he is no different than Yagura himself, even despite how he is he's only a helping hand or two away from his redemption.

I loved how Blazing Fists handled these two, I have no real thoughts on Ryoma because there isn't much to him other than being Yagura's sidekick and getting his ass kicked by Kishomaru's henchmen.

And this leads me to both this film's biggest problem and my own personal gripe with this film, it handles too much. There's multiple subplots that get no time to breath or if they do they get thrown under the main plot of the film and can get easily forgotten about. If it stuck to only 2 or 3 then it would've been better, I almost forgot about Yagura's dad being in prison until it gets shoehorned into the movie with an unnecessary character (Joey) attached.

Out of everyone's performances, from Yagura to Ryoma to Kishomaru's henchmen to even Susumu Terajima as a coach, my least favorite has to be Gackt's.

Look, I like Gackt as much as the next guy, he's a great singer (though not my favorite in the vkei world or even in Malice Mizer), but his presence in the film feels more like a celebrity cameo to get more people to watch it.

He's the "villain" of the film yeah, but Kishomaru filled the role in just fine for me, and even then he does nothing. He's the head of a yakuza-like biker gang and all he does is just sit around, say a couple lines, and have an anticlimatic fight scene. 

He appears once early on for a couple seconds and then doesn't appear again for nearly the entire film, his character has little to none personality other than being violent. I think it would've been better if anyone but Gackt played him, he's not tied to the story like Asakuru is and again, really only serves as a pointless celebrity appearance.

But going back to the positives of the film, the action is just incredible and I loved the way they showed off the fights and the brawls.

In the fights, they're fast and full of energy and are very animey where they hit a lot but don't do much damage and are backed by both bright visuals and a high energy soundtrack.

And on the other hand, you got the brawls. They're slow, and you can only hear and feel each hit until the fight ends and are backed by gloomy visuals with monotone coloring.

Now, finally, I would recommend this film to people who like Takashi Miike, sports dramas, or just want a good 2 hour action film. 

If you disagree (as this film is pretty mixed in reception overall) that's perfectly fine, I've never watched Break Down so I don't have any context that would have provided me (I.E actually knowing the real event or most of the cast who are related to the event), but I've also never seen Crows Zero (which I plan to in the future) which I've seen this film compared to.

I personally loved this film a lot as an outsider unfamiliar with Asakuru and wanted to give a much more positive review of the film as I rate and review on enjoyment instead of the overall quality, but I 100% understand why someone wouldn't like it.

That's all for now, Love and Peace!