The near-unstoppable and prolific Takashi Miike is, well, still as prolific as ever, turning his deft hand to all cinematic (and TV) genres, seemingly trying to cover them all. While his days of boundary-pushing, gross-out and extreme weirdness may be (somewhat) behind him, the filmmaker still applies his unique brand of oddball creative energy to his still-going-strong filmography, including this tale of troubled youths and bare-knuckle fighting.

Ikuto (Danhi Kinoshita) and Ryoma (Kaname Yoshizawa) formed a strong bond while serving time in juvenile detention and, upon release, the two would-be fighters sign up for the ‘Breaking Down’ fight tournament: a streamed online tournament that offers fighters from all backgrounds the chance to engage in short, sharp one-minute fight rounds. In effect, the perfect fight tournament for the attention-deficit, permanently online modern generation. Ikuto and Ryoma see the tournament as a chance to better themselves, channelling their impulses into quickfire fighting. However, life on the outside brings its own challenges, with one of the young lads’ fathers’ impending trial for possible murder, trouble from a local biker gang headed by Japanese rocker Gackt (‘Bunraku’), and gruelling training (among other tribulations) threatening to derail their fight tournament plans and potentially send them back to detention.

Based in part on Mikuru Asakura’s real-life YouTube fight series ‘Breaking Down’ (Asakura also appears as himself), the film (sort of) acts as a movie version of that online series coupled with much young adult melodrama. Seemingly always looking for an original hook in his films, Miike, for the most part, blends the real life with the fictional and the drama with the fight action well, the various plot strands giving a more rounded and fleshed-out narrative to proceedings. The melodramatic slant does wear a bit after a while, the seemingly multitudinous issues plaguing the young protagonists tipping the narrative very close to soap opera territory. Thankfully, Miike peppers the film with enough crunchy, punchy fight scenes and flecks of his well-known cinematic oddball-ness to keep things moving and interesting.

Don’t expect a full-on fight film, though ‘Blazing Fists’ still has its fair share of impressive beatdowns (earning its less-of-a-mouthful international re-title), including an impressive sustained final fight that effectively escalates the stakes of the fight action. Ikuto and Ryoma make for inspiring leads that one roots for despite the sometimes overcooked drama, and Gackt makes for a suitably menacing bad guy. Miike keeps everything feeling fresh and engaging and, while this (and a lot of his recent output) doesn’t reach the giddying, eye-popping heights of his films from back in the day, he still has enough inventive gas in the tank to make every new film his own.