It’s well known that Takashi Miike is one of the world’s most prolific directors, so it should come as no surprise that the director has decided to revisit the musical genre with For Love’s Sake, a film that blends various genres like romance, crime and comedy all under the musical umbrella. To say For Love’s Sake is an eccentric high school musical is putting it mildly but that’s exactly the reason why it has been selected as the opening night film at this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.
The film opens with an animated segment in which a wealthy high school senior named Ai (Emi Takei) recounts a time when she was skiing as a child and crashed into a young boy, Makoto (Satoshi Tsumabuki), leaving him with a giant scar on his forehead. Fast forward to present day and Ai encounters Makoto as he is battling a bunch of tough guys. After he kick’s all of their asses, Ai tries to stop him from hurting anyone and from running away. She sees through his hardened shell and is willing to do whatever it takes for him to transform into the man she knows he could be, which is why she has him enrolled in her prestigious school while she works at a sexy “dance café” and is willing to put her body on the line so that she can love him and make him a better man.
Unfortunately for her, Makoto wants none of this and has absolutely no interest in Ai, he’s perfectly happy with his violent, short-tempered ways. This works out for Four-Eyes (Takumi Saito), a guy who is head over heels in love with Ai and professes his love to her by way of song and dance…in front of their entire class. While Ai is not into him and Makoto not into Ai, this chain of romance makes its way from a wealthy private school to a bottom-of-the-barrel trade school in which chaos reigns and gangs rule the hallways. It’s here where Makoto unknowingly wins the hearts of two more woman, Gumko and Sad Chick (Ito Ono), and gets on the bad side of a yakuza boss who has an aging disease. As all of this unfolds a lot of people sing, a lot of people dance badly and a lot of people getting hit in the face, kicked in the gut or stabbed with something.
Miike’s film comes in at an unnecessarily long 133 minutes and once we hit the halfway point there are long delays between each musical number making the film feel very drawn out and uneven. Additionally, Miike has a ton of great ideas which don’t always come together for the simple fact that if he fleshed out each one we’d get a movie twice as long. It’s just too bad that if he starts to pick and choose we might get a much tighter picture but not necessarily one that’s as funny.
It may not be a perfect picture by any means but that doesn’t it stop For Love’s Sake from being a very entertaining flick that must be seen with a group of people to truly exploit its ridiculousness. The musical numbers are catchy, obnoxiously choreographed (but hilarious) and are set on vivid stages that visually make this film anything but unappealing to the senses. To add to that, even though the theme of the film is love, the motto should be violence begets violence as there are at least six fights, each intense and each with their own comedic twists making them exciting scenes to anticipate.
Though messy and longwinded, Miike’s For Love’s Sake is a gleefully violent genre mash-up that’s worth seeking out if you’re a fan of his work. He has tons of great ideas that don’t always come together but the fact that he can turn campy musical numbers into comedic gold and West Side Story type fights into awesomely brutal action sequences is a testament to his skill and why his latest film is a wildly fun time at the movies.
Rating: Brutal, amusing, and sweet, this lengthy genre mash-up is not your average cinematic spectacle (6.4/10)
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