Review of If You Were Young: Rage

another fukasaku film that sorta reminded me of Suzuki's style. like "blackmail is my life," this film focuses on the younger generation. it tells the story of four young men who can't quite stay out of trouble. eventually the get the idea of putting together some money in order to buy a dump truck and work for themselves. the story is told in a jumbled time structure - retelling the story of how they came to buy the truck and how two of them ended up dropping out of their business venture. really it's the story of japan and the potential the country had in the years following the American occupation. as Kurosawa's High And Low showed the best and worst of Japanese society in the early 60s, this film shows the potential of a country that was newly industrialized, but still coping with the changes of capitalism and being humiliated by world war II. fukasaku successfully shows hope and fatalism, optimism and pessimism, the power of the group and the importance of finding one's own path. the ending reaffirms these themes and adds a poignancy and power that the rest of the film only skirts. B.