It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Crows as a testosterone fueled, violence heavy gangster series always has its niche. I was rather taken back of how different Explode was to its first two predecessors. It doesn't have the same flair of comical wit, brash vicious scuffle or even the pristine visual. The worst mistake is how it churns so many subplots that none are actually fleshed out. Whereas it's easy to care for Genji and his rag tag friends, the short focus makes it hard to invest to any of Explode's characters.There are simply too many characters presented in short amount of time. With about four plots running at the same time, each with intertwined relationships, the story is hectic and muddled. You have the Suzuran boys, the rival school, yakuza and the other side characters, each with their own back stories and all tied up in convoluted struggles. Even the main character, Kazeo, isn't fully developed.It doesn't help that he as protagonist has so little range, but without wanting to compete or talk for that matter, Kazeo is surprisingly dragged by others. Pacing is plodded with unstable twist, some characters apparently have long relationships despite scarcely being in the same scene for a few minutes. Explanations leave much to be desired as most only mentioned slightly, but later on they would be talking privately merely for dramatic effect.There's not much ground to build on, leaving the eventual clash lackluster. Previous Crows needed two movies to introduce the rival school, but here it's thrown in about one third of the movie. It's probably better to highlight the struggle on Suzuran first as there are considerably many individuals that can be showcased or have feud with each other. As it stands now, most Suzuran students are only shown briefly with one, mostly two, fights under their belts.Compared to its prequels, Explode's most easily notable change is the visualization. It looks significantly drab, lacking the poise that makes Crows Zero seemed clean regardless the murky battle the characters often found themselves in. The shots are appropriate on some instances, but mostly the movie is confined, and for the fight scenes, sadly they don't bring the same level of anticipation.There's a bit of comedy either, but that doesn't really resonate. Fights are pretty good, thankfully the bread and butter of the series serves well. However, even this has some flaws on its choreography. In some cases, characters are seen swinging wild randomly or just standing unmoved. This shouldn't have happened since with few polished and good editing it would look better.I had much hope for Explode, but frankly, and sadly, without the Crows brand it would be just an ordinary gangster movie.

I knew that Takashi Miike wasn't involved with the title, so I kept an open mind when I started watching it. But the fact is this movie was horrible, and It felt like I have been watching this movie for 2 hours when I was only 60 minutes in. First, the casting for this movie was horrible, none of the new actors looked like they are suited for their roles. They tried to do a more complex story but it wasn't captivating, and left out a lot of great character development that we saw in the previous 2 films. The bad storytelling also made a lot of the fights in the movie seem meaningless.Most of the great elements in the series(not only the movies) that made Crows great are completely missing in this film. The moments in the previous movies that made you pumped up along with the great music that came on at the exactly right moments are gone. They tried to forced the issue in the movie with similar situation/music, but it just completely failed because I wasn't into the characters and the story. The fights were also extremely boring lacking the moments where they would pull off some sort of choreographed move. There are a lot more reasons but those are some of the main reasons that I didn't like this film. I can't say that this is an unwatchable film, but all of the different things that they did very well in the franchise are all missing. So, I am guessing you might like it if you didn't like the first 2.

The first 30 minutes is OK but the pacing become slow and slow till the end. Its boring. The first 2 Crows by Takashi Miike is awesome, its not this director is bad or what because he have make some good movie before. The real problem is the storyline, it doesn't have any strong plot in this movie. They use Kenzo story, the former character from previous Crows as a subplot but it still not works. Woman character is less used too in this sequel. But they forget something important in Crows Zero, something really important. The action scene! Although this movie only using street fighting as its martial art, they forget to hire any choreographer! We can see that all action scene here just use some random punch and kick here and there without any art, just like the director or the actor who know nothing about fighting choreographed the fight scene, which is really important for this movie. Even the names are not memorable and stylish at all, we still can remember Genji and Serizawa and it feel so good and cool to saying their name. This movie, I have forgot all their name, I think the hero named Kazeo and its not cool at all. Stay true to the book is the only way.

I am a big fan of this series and in fact have treasured the copies of first two movies as If it is my personal goldmine. I had waited patiently for the third movie for years. The last movie came out in 2009 and now its 2014 so imagine how long has it taken for the movie franchise to come out with a sequel but was it worth waiting this long? Absolutely notFirst of all we have to deal with the absence of its original star casts like Shun Oguri as Takiya Genji and Takayuki Yamada as Serizawa Tamao. They had immortalized their characters and the entire franchise with their power packed fists and acting. The new release on the other hand does not have an impressive star cast. The franchise which is known for its action is what is lacking in this movie primarily.If I am watching a movie from the crows series, I need to see some action but sadly the only action in this movie is right about at the beginning and at the very end and that too for a very brief second and long gone before you can even feast your eyes. Masahiro Higashide as Kaburagi Kazeo is good with acting but bad with action. He does not impress with his action skills but Yuya Yagira as Goura Toru was still impressive and so was the character black dynamite (only for action). Kento Nagayama as Fujiwara Hajime has a meaty role in the movie but that is what is bothering me. It felt as if the whole plot deviation just took out the essence of the basic movie. A recurring character Rinda man was totally wasted with barely there presenceThe movie franchise which entirely sprouted from its action sequences forgot that basic element in its new movie and instead diverted with a somewhat lukewarm performances and plot, totally disappointing the fans who have been dying for the sequel for a really long time.