FIRST LOVE

First Love is a 2019 gangster film from prolific Japanese director Takashi Miike. In his thirty year career Miike has directed over 100 theatrical, video, and television films, including the film adaption of the popular Phoenix Wright video game.

His work has spanned many genres, and even within First Love it manages to to straddle the tropes of gangster film, thrillers, and comedy.

First Love follows boxer Leo and sex worker Yuri, as they become embroiled in a gang war involving the Yakuza, the Triads, and corrupt police officers, motivated by, in Yuri’s case revenge, and for Leo the desire to help, and do some good, due to being told he has an inoperable brain tumour.

What follows is a twisty story of backstabbing and deceit, and violence that is bloody, excessive, and, at times borderline cartoony (at one point a severed head rolls into focus, before blinking twice at the camera).

It is creative in how it gets around budgetary constraints, for example, when they clearly didn’t have the money to film a car jumping from one building to another, the film literally does turn into a cartoon for that sequence - full of bright colours, rainbows, and anime style animation -, before going back to live action. This technique is only used once, is never explained, and really shouldn’t work, but somehow they get away with it.

First Love is another non-english language film that shows that the one inch barrier of subtitles is surmountable. Its story is universal, it’s action thrilling, and its comedy on point. So much so that after only ten minutes or so you totally forget that the subtitles are there.

It pulls you, and keeps hold of you for the whole 110 minute run time, and if you want a no holds barred, over the top, action thriller, it is a better offering than many English language films of the past few years.