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Director/Script/Editor TAKESHI KITANO

Director of photography KATSUMI YANAGISHMA

 

Students at a second-rate high school, Masaru and Shinji cut classes and spend all their time fooling around. They mock the teachers, distract the more studious pupils by performing cycle-stunts in the playground and finance their long hours in a favorite coffee-shop and a noodle restaurant by extorting small change from the pockets of classmates. Masaru is always the leader, Shinji his loyal sidekick. It's in the noodle restaurant that they first make the acquaintance of some local Yakuza gangsters. One day Masaru is beaten up. One of his regular victims at school has found a protector who knows how to box.

Humiliated, Maseru checks out a small boxing gym and begins to train as a boxer. Shinji, inevitably, follows suit. . . . and turns out to have more strength, talent and persistence than his friend. Masaru soon quits the sport, but Shinji trains hard and begins to win some junior bouts. The next time Shinji sees him, Masaru has joined the Yakuza as an ambitious young hoodlum . . . Two or three years later, Masaru and Shinji run into each other again by chance. They make their way back to their old school . . .