Fantasia 2026 Review: THE SPECIALS, A Crowd-Pleasing Yakuza Subversion

A yakuza member named Kumashiro hires four independent, rival assassins to eliminate Boss Honjō, the powerful leader of the rival Honjō-gumi syndicate. Executing the hit has always been complicated because Honjō frequently uses body doubles, leaving constant doubt regarding his true location. However, Kumashiro discovers a single vulnerability: Honjō will never pass up an opportunity to watch his beloved granddaughter compete in a dance competition.

 

To exploit this rare opening, the team devises a plan to form an amateur dance group, enter the qualifiers, and advance to the national final championship alongside the granddaughter. Although the independent killers are initially reluctant to join such an absurd undercover operation, the lure of a ¥100,000,000 bounty proves impossible to resist. Ultimately, to succeed in their mission, these rivals are forced to cooperate and unexpectedly learn to love dancing.

 

They are going to need some help along the way, and it comes from the unlikeliest of sources.

 

What if a hit squad of Yakuza killers had to win a dance competition to pull off a hit? Eiji Uchida's film, The Specials, mixes the action-comedy, the underdog dance movie, with the Fish-Out-of-Water humor core as its base. The audience got in return a super fun, high-energy action-comedy that flips serious gangster movie tropes on their head with a feel-good dose of music and dance.

 

We suspected that Uchida would balance the film's comedic premise with a clever casting strategy. So we went looking into the cast to see if he selected any iconic genre veterans known for their roles in Yakuza films to play against type as the dancing assassins or any other prominent yakuza members. We went into this screening blind as a bat so forgive us for not knowing ahead of time who was who in this film, though familiar faces started springing up instantly. Turns out there are five actors known for starring in Takashi Miike and Takeshi Kitano’s yakuza films starring in The Specials.

 

Naomasa Musaka (Brother, Yakuza Ladies) portrays Boss Kazama, the crime boss who greenlights the ¥100-million operation. His No. 2 enforcer who puts together the dance hit-squad is Kumashiro, played by Kippei Shiina (Outrage, The Outsider). Renji Ishibashi (Outrage) plays Boss Honjō, the powerful leader of the rival Honjō-gumi syndicate. And Sho Aoyagi (Yakuza Apocalypse) plays Shin, a hot-headed but fundamentally kind-hearted hitman.

 

But that’s just four, you say? We have saved the best for last. Probably the most famous among cult cinema fans would be the addition of Hitoshi Ozawa. Ozawa was one of the most prolific actors and icons during the peak of the DTV era. He was even nicknamed the "King of Yakuza movies." Ozawa plays Murasame, a hardened former assassin who has fallen on hard times and now finds himself washing cars of younger gang members.

 

While the plot follows bumbling, amateur dancers, two of the main actors are actually professional J-pop and K-pop idols. Daisuke Sakuma (Daiya) is from the J-pop group Snow Man, while Yuta Nakamoto (the killer, Kiryū) is from the global K-pop group NCT 127. Casting these two brings a burst of youth to the team. It also makes the dance numbers look legit, showing a clear progression from all the practicing.

 

However, despite that veteran legacy and youthful hit-making representation it is the youngest actress in the whole main cast who steals the show. Urara, a single-named burgeoning actress making her professional acting debut, portrays a dance-loving tween resident, Asuka, at the children's home where another lead character works. She steps in as the group's unlikely coach to train this ragtag crew of killers, and turn them into a proper dance squad in time for the competition. Urara completely owns every scene that she is in, overshadowing these yakuza film legends and pop idols with her charm and sweet naivety.

 

It is a shame because Urara and the character Asuka deserved a proper resolution, but it is too bad that her storyline ends with a dropped plot line, sort of. The fate of the children’s home, which served as motivation for one of the assassins to commit to the plan, is resolved. However, the relationship between the assassins and the young girl is left dangling. It is weird because confessions are made in the end but we never see what the orphan does with this information once the group is exposed for who and what they are. She gets lumped in with the group home win and that’s that. Any resolution would have done wonders here.

 

Because The Specials revolves around a team of hitmen who go undercover as a dance group, the action sequences and martial arts stunts were heavily stylized to match the dance movements. We unfortunately cannot credit a specific action designer here, as we simply could not find a listing for one in the credits online. The ducking, weaving and body movement does give the impression of action designed by Kensuke Sonomura (Baby Assassins, Ghost Killer). Still, the film’s true success is when it follows a "feel-good formula of music and dance" that deliberately pokes fun at traditional, tough-guy Japanese gangster cinema tropes.

 

If awards were given out for audience participation, the film would get top honors. We laughed, we cheered, we clapped along with the music—that is where the movie resonated with this audience. The Fantasia audience has always been enthusiastic about action films and scenes, but it takes a special movie to get them laughing and cheering this much at only the dancing and comedy and not the choreographed gunplay in the intermittent action scenes, as if to say, “Excuse us good sir, but these action scenes are harshing our buzz.”

 

Director Eiji Uchida has crafted an absolute blast of a movie. Minor script flaws aside, the brilliant mix of legendary tough guys, charismatic pop stars, and a powerhouse debut from young Urara makes The Specials an unforgettable crowd-pleaser that leaves you with a massive smile.