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.

Not being familiar with the manga upon which this movie franchise is based, I have nothing to compare it to. So it is solely based on seeing the movie alone that I can review this 2014 movie.

First and foremost, I must say that the fight scenes in the movie were plenty and often quite good. But with that being said, I should also move straight on to saying that this movie was essentially nothing else than just one pointless fight scene after another.

I managed to last one hour into this movie before I gave up out of sheer and utter pointlessness to the movie. It was nothing else except fighting, and that wore thin already within the first half hour. But I decided to stick with it, as I would assume that the movie would pick up and add some story-telling to the layers. But no, that was not to be.

There was no storyline to "Crows: Explode" (aka "Kurôzu Explode"),none whatsoever. And that fact was something that the movie suffered from tremendously.

I just threw in the towel after 1 hour and I am not going to return to finish this movie, and I am not going to take the time to watch any of the other movies, because the torment of watching this for one hour was more than enough.

I can't even comment on the acting in the movie, because there was literally no acting in it to base such a comment on. I am sure that people in the movie were good enough fighters in each their own way, but it just didn't appeal to me in any way.

This is definitely for a fans of the manga, but for anyone looking for an entertaining movie that is driven by a story, stay well clear of this one.

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.