Kids Return

Kitano lends his laconic, meditative style to this melancholy character study of two feckless boys, petty hoodlum Masaru (Ken Kaneko) and his shy best friend, Shinji (Masanobu Ando), at the end of their high school careers, floundering about while looking for a place in society. The peerless ensemble cast includes a comic duo who seem like they might actually make it out of this dead end world, an autobiographical note revealing the unmistakably personal nature of this project.