Worst X-movie of all time? PHOTO CREDIT: themoviedb.org
“High & Low” is a very popular Japanese movie and television series that I and many other people around the world love. It features action, friendship and a lot of Japanese singers and dancers as well.
I will admit, the main reason I wanted to watch this movie was because Yuta from NCT 127 was in it. Yuta is my favorite member of NCT and when I saw that he was in an action movie, I just had to watch it.
Of course, I could not just start with this film because there are seven other films before this one. I did watch the very first film, but then I got impatient and skipped straight to this one to see Yuta in his breakout acting role. I will be watching all six of the films that I did not watch because I really loved the first one and this recent one.
Now, something interesting that I found out was that there are a couple of singers in this film. Those singers being Kazuma Kawamura and Hokuto Yoshino of The Rampage from Exile Tribe, Ryoki Miyama of BE:FIRST and Makoto Hasegawa who is a dancer in The Rampage from Exile Tribe.
Yuta, of course, is a singer and dancer from NCT, and so it was really interesting to me that there were a lot of singers and dancers in this film. However, it makes sense because dancers are trained to move their bodies in a lot of ways, so fighting styles is something that I think they would learn very quickly.
Before I get into the plot and the movie, I want to mention that there is an original soundtrack (OST) for this film, and there is a song called “Wings” that is sung by Yuta, Ryoki, Hokuto and Kazuma. I really love this song and immediately fell in love with the voices of Ryoki, Hokuto and Kazuma.
All four of them sounded so good on this song, and it was also really creative to have all four of them on this song because in the movie, Ryoki and Yuta are the villains and Hokuto and Kazuma are the good guys. My favorite part is the last chorus of the song when Yuta and Kazuma’s vocals are combined, as well as Ryoki and Hokuto’s. I liked this because it was the nemesis’s singing together.
Alright, now let’s get into the movie.
Some background about this movie series is that there was once a renowned biker gang called MUGEN that dominated a city in Japan. The city was under their control until two brothers, the Amamiya brothers, opposed them and fought all of MUGEN. The battle was so fierce that nothing was resolved, and MUGEN along with the Amamiya brothers disappeared and broke up mysteriously.
After the fight, five organizations rose to take the power left over from both sides. These five teams are known as G-SWORD (S.W.O.R.D.), and each letter in S.W.O.R.D. stands for a different organization.
This movie is about Oya High School from the original “High & Low” and Senomon Technical School close to it. The head/leader of Senomon is Ryoki’s character, Amagai Kouhei. He has formed a trio school alliance with Kamasaka High School and Ebara Commercial High School. The goal of all three of these schools, especially Senomon’s goal, is to take down Oya High School and their head Hanaoka Fujio, Kazuma’s character.
Fujio is on his own mission to meet and challenge the leader of the Suzuran, Lao, played by Daichi Mikami. He challenges Lao due to his reputation and because he wants to just simply meet him. Hokuto’s character, Tsukasa Takajo, is a childhood friend of Fujio. Tsukasa tells and warns Fujio that being the leader/head of the school is more than just fighting, and that the Senomon gang/school is on the move.
All of a sudden, Oya High School is attacked by Amagai, Ryo (Yuta’s character) and the rest of the Senomon Technical School. Fujio is unfortunately caught between his own personal loyalties, the lack of precaution and being the head/leader of something. The intense and heated battle between the school’s to decide the one true top school has begun.
A lot of that plot information is coming from an article from “Phoenix Talks Pop Culture Japan” because the article really summed up the main plot of the movie very well.
Now, let’s get into the good stuff.
I really liked all of the original characters and the new characters added to this film. I think that there was a lot of growth from prior films from what I’ve read and seen online. I personally liked Yuta’s character, Ryo, even though he didn’t talk much. But, that was part of his character because of his relationship with Amagai. They were childhood friends and Amagai eventually took pity on Ryo because his family was poor, so he hired Ryo’s father as his personal driver and sees Ryo as a tool for his plans.
One of the best things about this movie is, obviously, the fighting scenes. I was floored by how amazing these fighting scenes were and I could not stop gasping and making unnecessary ad libbed noises. The amount of times I went “Oh!” “Ah!” “Dang!” “Shoot!” is both ridiculous and hysterical. I don’t know why, but watching these awesome scenes made me laugh because I just couldn’t fully take or anticipate these movesets.
One of my favorite fight scenes in this movie is the film between Tsukasa and Ryo. It was so intense and so well-choreographed. Ryo is my favorite character in the film because Yuta plays him, obviously, but this fight scene automatically made Tsukasa my other favorite character in the film too. He was a very interesting character and seemed like the reliable older brother of all the Oya High students.
Ryo ended up beating Tsukasa in their fight, and Senomon kidnapped him and used him as bait to lure out the rest of Oya High to their hideout to defeat them all. This was when things got really heated. The boys of Oya High love and respect each other immensely, especially Tsukasa; like I said, he is like the reliable older brother of the group.
Oya High ends up aligning with the Housen Academy and Suzuran (fun fact: Oya High is from “High & Low,” and Housen Academy is from the world of “Worst and Crows”). Suzuran joins Oya High after Fujio befriends Lao, who values and protects all of his friends. Together, all three schools go to Senomon High to take them, Kamasaka High and Ebara Commercial High down.
The ending fight scene was the most amazing, intense and jaw dropping fight scene I have ever seen. First off, Rao quite literally bulldozes nearly 10-15 guys and helicopter-tosses one of them into a group of five guys. Needless to say that my jaw had sunk all the way into the ground at how awesome that was, along with everyone else fighting each other.
For reference, Tsukasa has been beaten and tormented for the time he was held captive. It seemed like a day or so but he was just in awful shape from his fight with Ryo and taking hits and kicks from Amagai. Even after being tied up, beaten nearly to death and dangled from the ceiling, he still managed to fight Amagai and break his wrist. I lost my freaking mind watching this fight because Tsukasa should have been dead, but he still managed to fight Amagai and bring him down.
In turn, Ryo fights for Amagai and takes on Fujio in a very long and bloody fight. Hit after hit each of them takes from each other, and neither of them go down. They literally tremble and struggle to stand straight, but neither of them go down easily. I’m sitting watching this jumping up and down repeating to myself “Come on, come on knock him out please!”
The ending was really nice and it made me very happy because none of the characters I grew to love died. It did make room for another movie/sequel by leaving the characters alive and having them talk about getting revenge somehow. It also gave us the cliche of “this isn’t over.” I personally would be a fan of watching another sequel of this series, especially if Yuta’s in it again.