Synopsis
Kids Return (キッズ・リターン, 1996) is a Japanese crime drama directed by Takeshi Kitano — watch it online on iFILM. Shinji and Masaru are high school dead-enders: they bully classmates, skip class, shake down the weak. Then school ends and they have to figure out what to do with the rest of their lives. Shinji finds boxing. Masaru finds the yakuza.
Neither path works out the way they imagined. Shinji has the instinct for the ring but not the discipline; he starts drinking. Masaru rises fast in the gang and then discovers that being useful to criminals is a temporary condition. Kitano watches them without editorialising — no voiceover, no moral verdict, just the camera recording two young men slowly running out of road.
The film's last line — "Hey, we haven't even started yet, have we?" — arrived as a kind of self-portrait: Kitano had recently survived a near-fatal motorcycle accident and returned to filmmaking with this. The question behind the question is whether anything ever really begins. Stream Kids Return (1996) online on iFILM.
Starring
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