On December 10, 1968, a Nihon Shintaku Bank car transporting almost 300 million yen was stopped by someone posing as a police officer. While supposedly checking for a bomb under the car, this person set off a smoke flare, and the bank employees ran from the site, thinking a bomb was about to explode. The culprit then got into the car, and drove away with the money. Dubbed the "300 Million Yen Robbery", this was the biggest heist in Japanese history, followed by the biggest police investigation in Japanese history, and the perpetrator remains a mystery to this day. Over the years, this legendary heist has taken on romantic proportions for being so simple, successful, and supposedly victimless. It has been reimagined in various novels and films, most recently First Love, which puts NANA idol Miyazaki Aoi at the center of the crime.
Directed by Hanawa Yukinari, First Love, a.k.a. Hatsukoi, is based on Nakahara Misuzu's fictional autobiography in which she claims responsibility for the robbery. As much a meditation about coming of age in the chaotic 1960s as it is an account of the heist, the film features Miyazaki Aoi as a conflicted teenager. Co-starring for the third time as her brother (previously in Eureka and Riyu) is Miyazaki Aoi's real-life older brother, Miyazaki Masaru.
Amidst the sweeping social unrest of the 1960s, troubled high school student Misuzu (Miyazaki Aoi) finds company with her rebellious brother Ryo (Miyazaki Masaru) and his friends. Their meandering days are spent around bars, finding happiness through drugs, alcohol, and casual sex. Misuzu becomes particularly close with Kishi (Koide Keisuke, Pacchigi), who hatches a plan to rob a bank car. The plan goes remarkably well, but as their relationships and the world around them change, what they find is not success, but sorrow. |