Fantasia 2025: 'Blazing Fists' Movie Review

Blazing Fists is a much more manageable title for prolific Japanese director Takashi Miike’s new film, which is also known as Blue Fight: The Breaking Down of Young Blue Warriors. That’s a mouthful. Whatever you call it, this is a fairly straightforward action drama about young men using sports, mixed martial arts in this case, to rise above meager circumstances. But don’t worry, this is still Miike, so it also has biker gangs, violence, oddball flourishes, and a sardonic crime boss bored with the world in a casual, terrifying way.

 

Ryoma (Kaname Yoshizawa) and Ikuto (Danhi Kinoshita) meet in juvie and strike up a friendship. When real-life MMA fighter Mikuru Asakura, upon whose autobiography Blazing Fists is based, gives the prisoners a motivational speech, the duo decides to follow in his footsteps and use fighting, specifically a martial arts tournament, as a platform to improve their circumstances. But what waits for them on the outside is a mixture of hard training, complicated family dynamics, and pasts they find unfortunately difficult to put behind them.  

 

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Though there is action a-plenty—especially an epic climactic brawl that, once it kicks off, just grows and sprawls exponentially—the core of the film is a moving coming-of-age story. Ryoma and Ikuto grapple with the weight of expectation, from their families, from a world that views them as thugs, and from themselves. As they muddle through, Miike gives them the time and space to breathe and grow. The film presents Ikuto as a mindless brawler, though we quickly learn those initial assumptions couldn’t be farther from the truth. Ryoma,  introduced as soft-spoken and almost sweet, has his own secrets and demons that only become clear over time. It’s a deft, delicate portrait of friendship, and the two young actors have earnest, authentic chemistry and deliver lovely performances.

 

Miike adroitly balances the fight fights and the drama, weaving in various threads and asides for depth and texture. Former classmates pop in, a lingering street rivalry rears its head, Ryoma’s mother is a bit of a nightmare, while Ikuto’s is nothing but supportive at every turn. And again, the film gives them all room to develop and have complexity on their own. 

 

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Not all of these dalliances work well, however. For example, Ikuto’s father is in prison, on trial for a crime he did not commit. The imprisonment adds to the overall public perception that Ikuto is no good, while the fact that dear old dad is innocent nods to how the son is misjudged. That’s all well and good. But then it comes back. It turns out the corrupt prosecutor who is fabricating evidence against Ikuto’s father also has a teenage son in the martial arts tournament and has it out for Ikuto for no real reason. It happens late in the game and distracts from the forward momentum of the narrative. For all the side quests that enhance the film, there are a couple like this that never go anywhere and cause the pace to flag. At two hours, it’s a bit too long and overstuffed in places.

 

It's easy to think of Takashi Miike as always cranked up to eleven, with geysers of blood, giddy violence, and maybe a CGI chicken running around. There is some of that on display, like a kid in a neon track suit wielding a comically large mallet in a fight, but sometimes he likes to remind us that he can choose a lighter touch, and Blazing Fists is one of these. And correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe that in his hundred-plus movies he’s made an uplifting sports drama about the power of friendship before. Though don’t worry, there’s a dude hanging out in a furry costume for no reason, so it’s not entirely normal.

 

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