"Kids Return" is not a particularly enjoyable or must-see viewing experience. However, it might be worth showing to stupid teenagers, as the lesson in this 'Don't be an idiot'---and clearly illustrates the life of two morons as they enter adulthood.
Shinji and Masaru are two teenage juvenile delinquents. They often don't bother going to school and when they do, they goof off, beat up fellow students for their lunch money and commit petty crimes. However, as the film progresses you see some light at the end of the tunnel for the pair when they decide to take up boxing. However, one of them soon tires of it and joins the yakuza (Japanese mob). The other has a future as a great boxer. However, in BOTH cases, a lack of follow-through and stupidity ends up undoing their paths and by the end of the film, they are two unemployed idiots with no future.
Takeshi Kitano wrote and directed this film but did not appear in it. It's interesting in that so many of his other films seem to glorify the mob life--or at least look at it from a rather judgment neutral point of view. Here, however, it seems to be much more of a morality play where Kitano is taking away a lot of the romance and you see that dumb punks grow into dumb young adults! Well done but also not particularly enjoyable viewing.
