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Asian cinema: Japanese films
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Review | Tokyo Revengers movie review: Japanese gangster thriller is a cut above with its inventive time-travel twist

  • Starring Takumi Kitamura and Mio Imada, Tokyo Revengers is based on Ken Wakui’s bestselling manga series of the same name
  • Packing a distinct Back to the Future vibe, the movie is full of bloody brawls, outrageous hairdos and fearsome gangsters, with a hint of adolescent romance

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Nobuyuki Suzuki (left) and Takumi Kitamura in a still from “Tokyo Revengers” (category IIB, Japanese), directed by Tsutomu Hanabusa. Mio Imada co-stars.
James Marsh

3/5 stars

Based on Ken Wakui’s bestselling manga series of the same name, Tokyo Revengers sees director Tsutomu Hanabusa take the well-trodden teenage gang genre and give it a fantastical twist, infusing the film with a time-travel gimmick to rival Back to the Future.

Takumi Kitamura plays 20-something slacker Takemichi, who is magically transported back in time 10 years to when he was a high-school brawler swept up in a local turf war. Newly equipped with the knowledge of how future events unfold, he sets out to rewrite the course of history and save the life of his teenage love.

Marauding gangs of violent delinquents have provided rich material for Japanese filmmakers since the taiyozoku (Sun Tribe) days of the 1950s.

Much like their American counterparts, Japan’s post-war boom of idle teens, obsessed with music, cars, sex and violence, has gone on to shape its pop culture ever since. Its origins are clearly present in the ducktail and pompadour hairdos sported by Takemichi and his high school peers when he finds himself back in his own teenage body, circa 2010.

Rocking a bleach-blond haircut, Takemichi heads up a posse of tearaway teens hell-bent on doing no good. However, as we soon learn, he and his friends are themselves the much-persecuted targets of a rival gang of far more serious toughs.

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