Crazy Thunder Road is a 1980 Japanese punk-action-biker film written and directed by Gakuryu Ishii. The film is about a leader of a once-notorious biker gang in Tokyo that falls in love with a barmaid and quickly loses his rebellious ideals. For this the rest of the gang feel betrayed especially a troubled kid named Jinn who revolts against his former friend. Crazy Thunder Road is a snapshot of 80s punk countercultural Japan, showcasing angry young angst and alienated masculinity acting as a proto cyberpunk film and the blueprint for Akira.
The film starts with a crashed motorcycle treating it as an alien object, showing that this is ultimately the main purpose that dives most of the characters in the film. This is further shown with the next shot of the sound of revved up engines leading to the imagery of the motorcycle gang showcasing 80s punk countercultural Japan. In turns out that the leader on the gang Ken must break up the gang witch the other members aren’t happy about. This showcases the film’s themes of angry young angst and alienated masculinity. Without this gang the members have nothing biking is how they have value in life in destroying the gang the members untimely feel emasculated as this has destroyed their purpose in life. Jinn an angry young man in particular feels betrayed by this. Crazy Thunder Road very much leans into the classic counter cultural idea of young men riding motorcycles, this further highlights the themes of the film being angry young angst and alienated masculinity as this people feel as if they have nothing in life and have lost their sense of self whilst trying to carve out their own path. The gang ultimately feels lost without its leader, as a fight breaks out between them and another motorcycle gang. This again showcases the punk spirit running throughout the film as the film showcases angry young angst with no outlet for their energy, this is combined with alienated masculinity as they feel as if this lifestyle is the only outlet they have for there identity.
The gang has the be disbanded but Jinn and some other members won’t accept this. The dynamic between Ken being the leader and Jinn is the main driving force of the film Ken is the ex-leader of the gang whilst Jinn is an angsty young member and from this angst Jinn creates a new gang. Ken ultimate driving force for leaving is that he fell in love with a barmaid and wants to give up his old life to be with her. Within the film Ken and Jinn have a similar dynamic to Kaneda and Tetsuo from the film Akira. In Akira Kanada is at first the leader whilst Tetsuo is considered weaker, it is only though gaining psychic abilities that Tetsuo becomes more powerful and asserts his dominance over Kaneda. The whole film ultimately feels like a proto-Akira with its biker gang protagonists and set up. The biker gang wants to go on riding to survive. This again demonstrates the ideals of 80s punk counterculture japan as the film is one about rebels. The film deals with angry young angst and alienated masculinity as it showcases a lost and hopeless generation of doomed young men.
This idea of these people being the last of a dying breed is shown when the other gang members discuss jumping the gang that messed them up, but their leader is against it. The retired gang members end up seeking the help of an older military member a symbol of authority to help them who sees them as punks but ultimately want to help/use them for military proposes. As this is occurring the bikers engage in gang activity beating up people. This again highlights 80s countercultural japan as the film is a melting pot of angry young angst and alienated masculinity as violence is the only outlet these men have, as they start a gang war with another gang. This idea of romanticised biker rebel image is shown when the gang members are considered cool by the prostitutes, highlighting another point in the film being that Jinn is a virgin linking into some of the angst and alienation he feels emasculated. The gang ends up getting beaten up by another gang and one of the members gets kidnapped, as this happens however Jinn has sex ultimately symbolically becoming a man. All the other gangs decide to join to whip out their gang, Jinn gets this information from a woman who tells him not to go but Jinn refuses to look weak deciding they will go and recue them.
This in is contrast with the Ex-gang leader Kens life with his girlfriend. Shot in a nice it seems that he has ultimately found peace, however his old life won’t let him be also one of his old gang members symbolic of his old life shows up. Then then get into a fight showcasing 80s countercultural Japan as this fight scene demonstrates the angry young angst and alienated masculinity that dominate the film. The army guy then shows up with the other biker members as well as the ex-gang leader and his girlfriend to stop, as this ultimately ends with Jim fainting and one of their members dying. The film criticises right wing nationalist militaristic forces in the shape of the ex-military officer.
Jinn strung up on drugs tries to pick a fight with the ex-gang members, but the military guy stops him, he says that the gangs have untied and they the have become men ready to defend the nation. The military guy makes the do solider training as he wants to model them into what he sees as men. Within the film he acts like a manipulator as Jinn uses his rifle to attack the dummy in a fit of rage. Jinn and the rest of the bikers are transformed into what they hate the most a group of right-wing militants, but Jinn hates this as this goes against his ideology. This is further shown as other bikers show up calling them fascists. This provokes Jinn into quitting and the other ex-biker gang members try and talk some sense into him, but he is having none of it as Jinn prides his individualism. He then runs into some old gang members from a rival gang that have now become police officers shows that the time of rebels is up, and that society is stamping out these individuals. There are parallels between Jinn and the cornel in the film in that most of the people that were in their respective clicks have now left them. The military guy wanted to turn Jinn into a solider and now he wants to do the same with the remaining member as he wants to make someone in his own image. Ken wants the military guy to discipline Jinn a stark contrast to his once rebellious leader persona. Throughout the film Jinn is considered an inconsequential punk, and he ultimately lashes out at this as when he starts a fight with an ex-rival gang at a disco.
Jinn then gets into a fight with other gang members that end up cutting his hand off with a chainsaw. The scene shows Jinn lying in a hospital bed as he feels emasculated but again, he in some perverse sense wanted this as he was the one who attacked two other gangs, this emasculation is further sown when one of the ex-gang members presents him with flowers. Jinn can’t take this emasculation anymore and throws the flowers which are then put back as he tells them to get out. A great contrast is shown between the ex-gang leader and his girlfriend playing board games in bed with him wearing glasses and Eji one of the gang members almost dying. This showcases how far the ex-member has come from that world in contrasts with the biker’s grim reality. Jinn is shown limping with disabled people next to him as he is now considered like one of them. From this Jinn falls into a state of depression at the death of his friend and turns to heroin as he imagens himself riding a motorcycle. Jinn is like a lost soul wondering a dying world, he destroys windows out of anger and beats people up going on a weird rampage. His existence is shattered as he finds himself in an abandoned building with other crazy people.
A young kid then offers him drugs symbolic of the new age. He then comes across a crazy guy who gives him the firepower to destroy the town as the kid shoots up heroin. He ultimately wants to destroy the right-wing group and get revenge on hr military guy. The ex-biker gang members become scared of Jinn as they want to defend the city. Jinn and the crazy guy attack the reformed gang members using rockets to get back to the good old days of biker brawls. Jinn and the kid then use dynamite to destroy them, as Jinn shoots a rocket launcher at the Jeep killing some people. The other soldiers then shoot him with a machine gun as Jinn takes them out with a revolver. The film climaxes with Jinn badly injured facing off against his old fiend now enemy, as the coronel shoots them both. The kid in turn shoots and kills the cornel cementing the idea that rebels will now belong to the next generation. Jinn is helped on the bike by the kid who tells him that the breaks don’t work but Jinn doesn’t care, he knows he will die soon anyway. It turns out the Ken the ex-leader of. The biker gang and his girlfriend split up and that she’s back together with her ex. She says that he became square and that she wouldn’t have let him go soft. This shows how to emasculate men ultimately leads to there down fall and that it’s not necessarily what women want as men need to have a sense of rebellion within them to live. Ken is left broken and disappointed as now he has nothing. The film ends with Jinn riding his bike badly injured and with no breaks. The fil mends with smoke, linking to the begging of the film showing that the crashed bike at the begging was Jinn’s bike and that he died doing what he loved.
Crazy Thunder Road is about embracing who you truly are. It demonstrates the need for a rebellious spirit in an authoritative world and that rebels are ultimately the ones needs the most within society.