Disutorakushon beibîzu

"Destruction Babies" is a film that perfectly illustrates Japanese movie violence-lean and mean. The plot revolves around a violent, nihilistic young man (played with menacing gravitas by Yuya Yagira) randomly picking fights with strangers. Despite being battered to the bone, his peverse persistence attracts another troubled young man (played brilliantly by Masaki Suda) who becomes his wingman. The wingman character films himself and his boss on their beating spree-even kidnapping a young shoplifting cabaret girl (played by the beautiful Nana Komatsu) in the process. They all escape from town but is cut short when the beating spree becomes national news. The violence in this film is relentless-all the fight scenes are very gritty and realistic. Hardening back to the early Takeshi Kitano films (particularly Violent Cop), the violence is quite spontaneous, just how suddenly the nihilist and his wingman picks a fight with anybody on the street. On a thematic note, the film does shed light on the state on current Japanese society. As the fights gain more public attention, the crowds do very little to stop the conflict but rather ignore or film the occurrence on their smartphones. It shows that there is a combine of repressed anger in Japanese society, under the innocent and peaceful facade. The nihilist is an extreme example of a defiant sociopath, while his wingman and young girl represent the cowardly cruel youth, but then transform into monsters that are nastier than the main character. The way the nihilist spreads his act of violence to other characters like a virus is a not too far-fetched-apparently the director Tetsuya Mariko based the film on a real life anecdote. It's not the movie violence of sword slashing and decapitating body parts-it's beat ups that wastes no time, like real street fighting.