Kids Return

Kids Return follows two former high school friends who drift apart after leaving school. Shinji and Masaru spent their student days causing trouble, picking on classmates and playing pranks. Once out of school, Shinji takes up boxing while Masaru falls in with a local yakuza gang. Both chase success in their chosen paths, but each runs into setbacks, and their lives take them in different directions.

Takeshi Kitano directed and wrote the film, the fifth of the sixteen features he has directed, following Sonatine and preceding Fireworks. Masanobu Ando plays Shinji and Ken Kaneko plays Masaru, with Leo Morimoto, Hatsuo Yamaya, Mitsuko Oka and Yuko Daike among the cast of fifty-four credited performers. The film was produced in Japan by Bandai Visual, Office Kitano and Ohta Publishing, and runs 107 minutes.

On IMDb it holds a rating of 7.4 from around 7,300 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 6.9 from roughly 346 votes. A critics' rating of 7.8 from five reviews places it somewhat above the audience scores recorded on those platforms.