Released in 1996, "Kids Return" was a change of pace for director Takeshi Kitano, whose films to date had usually starred Kitano himself as a cop or a gangster, meting out violence with a brutal efficiency and a wry black humor. Critics mostly admired them and moviegoers mostly shunned them, despite Kitano's status as TV's No. 1 comic and MC.
Made in the then-typical Kitano style — long takes, little camera movement, quirky jokes and sudden bursts of realistic violence — "Kids Return" was nonetheless atypical in its low body count and its focus on two high school dropouts, Masaru (Ken Kaneko) and Shinji (Masanobu Ando), who seemed to be going exactly nowhere. As it ambled toward its conclusion, with Shinji by now a struggling boxer and Masaru an apprentice gangster, the heroes were little closer to their goals, if still as outwardly defiant as ever.
Despite its ambiguous ending, "Kids Return" became a modest hit, while winning praise as a small gem that mixed rude, crude gags with sharp observations on human frailties — and the way dreams can abruptly turn into nightmares.