Kankurô Kudô	...	(Director)
Kankurô Kudô	...	(Writer)
Ryo Katsuji	...	Masaru
Yuichi Kimura	...
Kazunobu Mineta	...	Jimmy - 25 years ago
Hiroki Miyake	...	Young
Aoi Miyazaki	...	Kanna Kurita
Yusuke Santamaria	...
Koichi Sato	...
Tomorowo Taguchi	...	Jimmy
Pierre Taki	...	Kinji Kaneko
Kazunari Tanaka	...	Cinematographer
Kôichi Satô	...	Akio
Shô Aikawa	...	Kannas's father
Hiroshi Inuzuka	...	Father of Akio and Haruo
Hoshi Ishida	...	Young - 25 years ago
Setsuko Karasuma	...	Miho
Atsuo Nakamura	...	MC at TV show
Shigeru Nakano	...	Police officer
Kazuki Namioka	...	Haruo - 25 years ago
Tomohito Sato	...	Akio - 25 years ago
Seiichi Tanabe	...	Telya
Yûichi Kimura	...	Haruo
Yûsuke Santamaria	...	Tokita
Kazushige Tanaka	...	Cinematographer

Comments: I'll watch anything with Aoi Miyazaki in it but it was extremely tough this time. She's fabulous, of course, and the film starts off with a refreshingly bizarre sense of humor, but it quickly devolves into toilet humor. Miyazaki plays a record company office worker who discovers a punk rock band on the Internet, thinks they are the next big thing, and decides to represent them on behalf of her company. What she doesn't know, at first, is that the band's web site and videos are 25 years old, so she must follow through promoting a group of middle-aged punk rockers because contracts have been signed and jobs are on the line. I can't imagine who this movie is aimed at. Young people (who are into punk) will recognize it as fake and older people (who may have been punks) will too. Brass Knuckle Boys confuses punk with childishness and fails to create characters that anyone will care about. For every quick and funny moment that works, and there's a bunch of them, there's umpteen that don't. And the sibling rivalry family drama subplot is painfully uninteresting. I'm a huge Aoi Miyazaki fan but a two hour fart joke is a bad vehicle for her.

★★★

Summary: A long lost punk rock band hits the comeback trail, whether they like it or not, in this comic mockumentary. Kanna (Aoi Miyazaki) is an A&R executive with a record company, Maple Records who has been told she needs to find a hot new act soon if she wants to save her job. Kanna finds some blistering live footage on the internet of a punk rock band named the Brass Knuckle Kids, and she's convinced she's discovered Japan's next great rock band. However, Kanna learns that the online clip dates from 1982; undeterred, the label's chief (Yusuke Santamaria) is eager to reunite the band, have them cut a new album and put them back on the road. Kanna tracks down Brass Knuckle Kids guitarist Akio (Koichi Sato), who is working a menial job in a restaurant; he's anxious to put the band back together despite being close to fifty years old and struggling with a drinking problem, and with Kanna's help he rounds up the rest of the band. Bassist Haruo (Yuichi Kimura), who is also Akio's brother, is now a dairy farmer who prefers to have nothing to do with his old bandmates; drummer Young (Tomorowo Taguchi) is ready to take the stage again and even gets his Mohawk back in shape for the occasion; and lead singer Jimmy (Kazunobu Mineta) is game even though he can barely get out of his wheelchair. Can these aging rebels set aside their differences and grab the brass ring they missed years ago? The Brass Knuckle Kids' music in the film was written and recorded by real-life Tokyo punk band the Ging Nang Boyz.