“Baby Assassins: Nice Days” Theatrical Poster

Director: Yugo Sakamoto
Cast: Akari Takaishi, Saori Izawa, Sosuke Ikematsu, Atsuko Maeda, Atomu Mizuishi 
Running Time: 112 min. 

By Paul Bramhall

Whatever your opinion of director and writer Yugo Sakamoto, what can’t be denied is that few filmmakers are keeping grounded martial arts movies alive quite like he is. In the 4 years spanning 2021 to 2024 his Baby Assassins trilogy has cemented a modern-day iron triangle of action goodness – with the other key players represented by co-star Saori Izawa and fight choreographer Kensuke Sonomura. That’s not counting The Janitor (which provided the assassins their first appearance) and the 12-episode mini-series. Admittedly, everything in-between the action is more of an acquired taste. The first Baby Assassins was an unsuccessful mix of forced quirkiness and abrasive characters, while the sequel struck a much more palatable balance. At the heart of every entry is the pairing of leads Saori Izawa and Akari Takaishi as the assassins of the title, and 2024 saw the release of the third entry, Baby Assassins: Nice Days.

Ditching the more episodic nature of the previous 2 entries, BA: ND (as I’ll refer to it from here on in) opts for a more linear narrative that does wonders for the pacing. For a start we don’t spend any time on the couch of their Tokyo apartment this time around, with the pair enjoying some downtime in the beachside town of Miyazaki, in-between a contracted hit the guild has assigned them to in the nearby locality. Problems arise though when they bust in on their target, only to find another assassin about to pull the trigger and beat them to it. Played by a scene stealing Sôsuke Ikematsu (Shoplifters, Death Note: Light Up the New World), he plays the classic renegade assassin with a passion for killing. His freelancer hitman proves to be a formidable opponent for the pair, resulting in him walking away unscathed, and their target managing to escape.

Displeased with their employee’s performance, the guild sends a pair of senior assassins to join Izawa and Takasihi, played by Atsuko Maeda (Before We Vanish, Masquerade Hotel) and newcomer Mondo Otani, with the foursome’s mission being to kill Ikematsu, and then finish off the original job. As expected, the socially awkward and carefree attitudes of Izawa and Takaishi soon start to clash with the no nonsense approach of their new colleagues, but when it turns out Ikematsu also works for the hilariously named Agricultural Assassin Co-Op, they realise they’ll need to work together to survive.

Sakamoto seems to have realised with the third entry that the recipe needed to be changed up to stay fresh, and by putting Izawa and Takaishi up against the wall from the beginning, it delivers the intended narrative thrust that gradually builds in momentum across the 112–minute runtime (marking the longest of the trilogy). The initial confrontation between Izawa and Ikematsu (which takes place as Takaishi attempts to chase down their target) is both brutal and innovative, with the pair literally fighting as they run, desperately trying to reach a handgun that’s constantly kicked or thrown further out of their reach. It shows all the signs of a collaboration between director, fight choreographer, and star who’ve worked together long enough to start pushing each other’s abilities to the next level, and it’s a delight to watch.

The decision to switch from CGI blood to fake blood is also a commendable one, with the makeup department not shying away from showing the damage that Ikematsu’s barrage of fists and feet take on Izawa, particularly when she’s left a bloodied heap on the floor at the end of their initial confrontation (and this is even before the title has appeared onscreen, which eventually arrives over 20 minutes in!). For the first time in the series there’s a tangible sense that one of them may possibly not make it to the end credits (even though the fact the TV series is set after this instalment acts as a minor spoiler that they both do).

Events transpire to give BA: ND somewhat of an Accident Man: Hitman’s Holiday vibe through the direction the plot takes, with the actual target (played by the singularly named Kaibashira – Koji Shiraishi’s Never Send Me, Please) eventually falling under the protection of Izawa and Takaishi. Hunted by members of ‘The Farm’ – the nickname for the previously mentioned Co-Op – the situational humor around the fact those who end up protecting him also plan to kill him once they’ve offed the troublesome Ikematsu delivers the intended laughs (much like the situation Scott Adkins and Perry Benson find themselves in!). In fact it’s fair to say that with this third outing Sakamoto shows a level of maturity when it comes to both the characterisation and the humour, with the latter no longer feeling as forced as it did in the first instalment.

While anyone clocking into any of the Baby Assassins movies (and now TV mini-series) will be doing so for the action, the investment in Izawa and Takaishi’s relationship feels much more relatable this time around, with the danger they’re in allowing both actresses to display a genuine concern for the other. The shift away from the cutesy and quirky actually allows both characters some breathing space to feel more like people the audience should care about, and by the time the end credits roll for the first time I was left wanting more.

However the most important aspect of BA: ND is, expectedly, the action. As mentioned earlier proceedings start off with a bang, and choreographer Kensuke Sonomura does a stellar job of building on the action as the plot progresses. In the same year he’d direct Ghost Killer, which starred one half of the Baby Assassins in the form of Akari Takaishi, for which he also handled the action, and while the fight action was of the usual high quality, one of my complaints was that the gunfights felt uninspired and flat. Not the case here, with a bullet riddled finale executed with creativity to spare, and while no one is ever going to mistake these movies for coming with a high budget, the kinetic energy of the scenes does enough to overlook any minor misgivings.

Where the action truly shines though is when the cast are left empty handed, or at least, armed only with a knife. Stuntman Santoshi Kibe not only clocks in an assistant action coordinator credit, but also makes one of his rare front of camera appearances (the last time was in 2019’s Hydra), playing the most feared assassin from the Agricultural Assassin Co-Op. Given the opportunity to bust out some monkey kung-fu against Mondo Otani in a basement carpark, his agility mixed with the fact he’s fully suited and booted make his brief appearance a memorable one. We need more monkey kung-fu in contemporary action movies (caveat: no references to Steven Seagal’s 2003 masterpiece Out for a Kill allowed)!

Of course the heavy lifting is given to Izawa in the finale, who after taking on a group of assassins in a frantic melee, is finally given the opportunity for a rematch against Ikematsu. Both know how to make Sonomura’s choreography shine, with the fight ensuring we understand she’s the underdog from the get-go, once more clearly being overpowered and outdone by the latter’s aggressive attacks. It’s a knock down drag out affair, and there’s some genuinely hairy moments when it seems a certainty the end is near, which only makes the way Iwatsu and Akaishi end up teaming up all the more satisfying. The culmination of everything the narrative has been building to so far, it ranks as one of the most satisfying final fights in recent years.

The expression goes that the third time’s a charm, and with Baby Assassins: Nice Days director and writer Yugo Sakamoto has very much proven it to be true. At the end of my review for Baby Assassins I concluded that “It’s really not an action movie, so at the end of the day, it’s both ironic and a little sad that there’s not much to recommend outside of it.” Just 3 years later, and the 3^rd instalment not only delivers on the action, but remembers to make us care about everything else as well. Recommended.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 8/10

The post Baby Assassins: Nice Days (2024) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Ghost Killer” Theatrical Poster

Director: Kensuke Sonomura
Cast: Akari Takaishi, Mario Kuroba, Masanori Mimoto, Sora Inoue, Akaka Higashino, Naohiro Kawamoto, Hidenobu Abera, Naoto Kuratomi, Satoshi Kibe
Running Time: 105 min.

By Paul Bramhall

A lone figure in the darkness of a deserted marketplace alley faces off against 3 masked attackers, fending them off set to the rustle of their clothes, the shuffle of their footwork, and a flurry of quick, precise strikes. Within seconds the choreography on display can be identified as the work of Kensuke Sonomura, an action director who’s been active since the mid-2000’s, acting as the action choreographer on the likes of The Machine Girl and Deadball. However it was with his 2019 directorial debut Hydra that he really cemented his distinctive style – one that dials back action scenes to their purest form, absent of any kind of soundtrack, and relying purely on the movements and sounds of the performers onscreen to create a sense of conflict and danger.

It’s a style that’s immediately recognizable in the same way that the Jackie Chan or Donnie Yen style of choreography comes with its own distinctive DNA, and Sonomura has found a muse for his onscreen mayhem in the form of Masanori Mimoto. With a choreographer-performer relationship dating back to the likes of 2010’s Alien vs. Ninja and 2013’s Bushido Man, it made sense that Sonomura cast Mimoto as the lead for his directorial debut, and he’d crop up again in Sonomura’s sophomore crack at sitting in the director’s chair with 2022’s Bad City. They say third times a charm, and in 2024 Sonomura has returned to the role of both director and action director with the release of Ghost Killer.

The lone figure that opens Ghost Killer with the marketplace fight scene is also Masanori Mimoto, and after disposing of the trio of assailants, he finds himself on the wrong end of a bullet. Playing an assassin for hire, his untimely death sees him harbour a grudge, one that prevents him from entering the afterlife until justice is served. Thankfully an opportunity arises to do exactly that when a college student discovers the casing of the bullet that delivered the kill shot, which allows Mimoto’s spirit both to communicate with her directly, as well as (and more significantly) possess her body, providing a vessel for his considerable fighting skills. Played by one half of the Baby Assassins, surprisingly Sonomura has chosen to go with the non-stunt performer of the pair, and cast Akari Takaishi as Mimoto’s only way to continue communicating with the world of the living.

It’s a familiar setup, riffing on the likes of Hong Kong’s Where’s Officer Tuba? and Taiwan’s Kung Fu Student from the 1980’s, transplanting the dynamic of a martial arts savvy ghost possessing an unexpected member of the living to the streets of modern Japan. While it’s Takaishi who takes top billing, Mimoto can essentially be considered a co-star, since there aren’t too many scenes when he’s not by her side or being called into action. Takaishi isn’t the only link to the Baby Assassins trilogy (and now a TV Mini Series as well!) though, as apart from all of them featuring Sonomura’s action direction talents, it’s also their director Yugo Sakamoto who’s penned the script for Ghost Killer (one of the funniest lines has Takaishi suggest to her roommate that they could “…watch those three shitty movies we talked about.” – a clear in-joke referencing the Baby Assassins trilogy).

The result is one that makes Takaishi’s struggling college student feel like a not-too-distant incarnation of her Baby Assassins character, and how much you enjoyed her character in that series will be a strong indicator of how much you’ll enjoy Ghost Killer. Living in a state of perpetual exasperation even before she realises there’s a ghost following her around, her frazzled state is one we spend the majority of the 105-minute runtime with, and if your sense of humor isn’t in tune to the constant outbursts of flusterment, it could come across as a little grating. Much like Saori Izawa provided the counterbalance in Baby Assassins, its Mimoto’s sardonic hitman that takes on the same role here, strolling around with a blood-stained sweater where he got shot, and reluctantly coming to accept that his hitman days are over.

Their relationship acts as the anchor to Ghost Killer’s tried and tested plot of an assassin who’s been wronged by the agency he provided his services to, heading to the inevitable confrontation between former (well, actually dead) employer and those he used to work for. Able to possess Takaishi’s body by clasping hands, soon she’s putting the beatdown on her friend’s abusive boyfriend, and confronting cinnamon sniffing influencers with a tendency to spike girls drinks to take advantage of them. The fight that takes place within the confines of a small bar against the latter also acts as one that sets the rules for the possession plot device, with Mimoto realising he needs to keep his opponent in a choke hold 30 seconds longer than usual due to Takaishi’s “skinny arms”.

It’s a smart angle to take possession trope from, with a lethal hitman having to adjust to applying his skillset in the body of a female college student, but it’s not one that Sonomura sticks with. By the time we get to the finale, an uninspired shootout sees the scene alternate between having both Takaishi and Mimoto appear onscreen, however when it comes to the inevitable one on one, Sonomura wisely givens centre stage to Mimoto. It’s a decision which will likely split audiences down the middle, and I can imagine for anyone watching Ghost Killer who doesn’t have a vested interest in the talents involved, the sudden departure from one of the most interesting plot points will likely seem like a criminal oversight. For those that do (and if it wasn’t clear already, this is the category I fall into!), then the fact the decision means we get a rematch between Mimoto and Naohiro Komoto makes any narrative misdemeanours forgivable.

The finale of Hydra gave us an uninterrupted 4-minute showdown between the pair, and here it ups the ante by stretching their fight out to 7 minutes. Their rematch serves to once more show why Sonomura is one of the best fight choreographers working today, with the fight seamlessly transitioning between knife work to empty handed strikes and grappling, and while the finish doesn’t have the same sense of catharsis as their confrontation in Hydra, it still delivers. Sure, it makes no sense whatsoever that it’s actually supposed to Takaishi who’s on the receiving end of Komoto’s blows, but then again if the rules were being strictly adhered to, the fight would probably have been over in 2 minutes.

Despite ending on a strong note, as the end credits rolled there’s an undeniable feeling that at 105 minutes, Ghost Killer is a tad overlong. The 75-minute runtime of Hydra feels like the perfect sweet spot for Sonomura’s directorial talents, with Ghost Killer’s mid-section suffering from a lack of narrative thrust that makes the time start to drag. While as an action director Sonomura is a master at being able to inject tension into the fight scenes, when it comes to doing the same for the more dialogue driven and dramatic elements of the story, for the most part these scenes come across as flat and pedestrian. Much like in Bad City, the runtime would have benefitted from leaving some of the more superfluous characters on the cutting room floor in favour of being leaner, in this case an apprentice hitman played by Mario Kuroba (Hard Days, Sadako DX) could easily have received the chop.

Despite Akari Takaishi receiving top billing, Ghost Killer feels more like it belongs to Masanori Mimoto. It’s his character that ultimately gets a narrative arc to conclude his story of a ghost with a grudge, while Takaishi’s character serves little purpose beyond acting flustered and delivering some rather laboured attempts at comedy. If you’re able to sit through the latter, then you’ll be rewarded with some of the best action of this decade from the former.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 6/10

The post Ghost Killer (2024) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Demon City” Netflix Poster

Director: Seiji Tanaka
Cast: Toma Ikuta, Masahiro Higashide, Miou Tanaka, Ami Touma, Taro Suruga, Mai Kiryu, Naoto Takenaka, Takuma Otoo, Masanobu Takashima, Matsuya Onoe
Running Time: 107 min. 

By Paul Bramhall

If I had to guess I’d say the audience for Demon City falls into 2 categories – the first being those who’ve been waiting for the sophomore feature from director Seiji Tanaka, and the second being fans of the manga that it’s adapted from, Oni Goroshi. Personally I fall into the first category, with Tanaka’s 2018 debut Melancholy being one of the best surprises of the 2010’s, a witty and offbeat tale of a bathhouse worker who comes to realise it’s used by the yakuza after hours to carry out hits. As a new voice in the world of Japanese cinema it showed a lot of promise, and despite it taking 7 years to release his 2^nd feature, the anticipation to see how he’s developed as a filmmaker is no less. Netflix hopefully feel the same way, since it’s their platform that Demon City has landed on.

Taking a slice out of Timo Tjahjanto’s The Shadow Strays, Demon City opens with an assassin played by Toma Ikuta (Miike Takashi’s The Mole Song trilogy) taking out a household full of yakuza in violent fashion. The massacre was intended to be his last job (aren’t they all?) before he settles down with his wife and 5-year-old daughter, but unfortunately the rival yakuza who sanctioned the hit want no trace left over, so his post-shower family time is interrupted by 5 demonic mask wearing men in suits who have come to finish the job. With his wife and daughter meeting a grizzly demise, he’s left for dead and falls into a coma for the next 12 years, with the news of his waking up resulting in the same villains who murdered his nearest and dearest returning to finish the job.

Why didn’t they just kill him in the first place if they know that’s what they’re planning to do if he ever wakes up from the coma he was in? Demon City isn’t concerned with you asking such questions, and in any case there’ll be plenty more plot hole induced head scratching before the end credits roll. A character explains how the port city of Shinjo is believed to be afflicted with a demon that possesses someone every 50 years, causing said person to go on a killing spree. Is Ikuta’s awakening a sign that he’s the one that’s been possessed this time? It’s never explained, nor is it at any point hinted at, leaving the audience baffled as to whether we’re watching a vengeance fuelled husband and father extracting revenge, or something more supernatural.

Tanaka’s uncertainty around how much the supernatural element should be leaned into unfortunately results in moments of unintentional comedy which, reading between the lines, where probably intended to reflect Ikuta being imbued with some kind of supernatural ability. The speed he recovers from the coma offers up the first eyebrow raising moment, immediately getting into a fight with 3 assailants while still lacking full mobility of his body, before throwing in a few clicks of the neck and he’s on his way, easily putting Steven Seagal in Hard to Kill to shame. There’s another moment in the finale where he’s repeatedly struck across the face by a steel pole wielding opponent. They’re the kind of hits that would leave anyone unconscious after a single blow, but the fact he’s able to stand there and repeatedly take them in slow motion, all set to a harrowing score, feels like some kind of absurdist slapstick.

In fairness to Ikuta none of these issues are his fault, who does well as the lead role. After his awakening in the first 10 minutes the script gives him even less lines than Keanu Reeves in John Wick: Chapter 4, instead allowing him to convey a quietly brooding presence. Ikuta’s performance makes it easy to buy into his plight, even if his choice of a Dodge Charger sometimes makes Demon City feel more like a Japanese take on Drive Angry than it does an adaptation of a manga. The action also picks up considerably after the awkwardly edited hospital throwdown, with the action direction coming courtesy of Takashi Tanimoto, who previously served in the same role on the adaptation of City Hunter from the previous year (and notably played the bounty hunter character in 2013’s Bushido Man).

A brawl in a factory is a highlight, and once Ikuta get his hands back on his trademark weapon – a large machete style blade attached to a rope, things get particularly bloody. The manga influence comes through in the exaggerated explosions of blood that come out of anyone who finds themselves on the end of Ikuta’s blade (although unfortunately it’s all done with CGI), feeling like an update to the blood geysers seen in the likes of the Lone Wolf and Cub series, and there’s a few worthy impacts shots thrown in for good measure. Interestingly the more the plot progresses the messier the action gets, with the finale in particular feeling more like a desperate brawl, all set to the throbbing electric guitar riffs of Tomoyasu Hotei.

One aspect that Tanaka has definitely secured bragging rights to with Demon City is having Hotei come onboard as the composer, one of only a handful of times he’s done so in his illustrious career as Japan’s most recognizable electric guitarist. For anyone unfamiliar, I can practically guarantee you’ll have heard his piece Battle Without Honor and Humanity somewhere, with its first, and arguably still best, use in Kill Bill: Vol. 1. Having an electric guitar riff as the main soundtrack in a 2025 action movie may feel a little antiquated, but personally I’d take old school charm (even if it is kind of cheesy) over the generic electro soundtracks that populate so many straight to streaming action movies any day of the week.

One observation in watching the action play out is that I get the feeling the evolution of onscreen hyperviolence is reaching the same tipping point that we’ve seen with the devolution of CGI, albeit it’s got there far faster. 14 years ago The Raid set an exciting new bar by focusing as much on bodily damage as the choreography itself, the result of which felt exciting and fresh. However with the advancement of technology, much like we’ve seen with large scale CGI set pieces, there’s also come a realisation that when there’s no limits to what can be shown onscreen, violence can quickly lose its edge. Stabbing frenzies in a 2020’s production rarely carry the same shock factor as they do in a 2000’s production, and similarly here when a machete gets wedged in the side of someone’s face, the expected “whoa!” moment is missing in action. Ultimately the seamless digital illusion still isn’t quite there, and so neither is the intended impact.

Overall Demon City feels like a movie with an identity crisis, one that’s fallen between the cracks of how much it should fit into the Netflix straight to streaming action movie template, and how much it should attempt to faithfully adapt its manga origins (which as of the time of writing is still an ongoing series, currently 14 volumes in). It’s a conflict which sometimes feels like its playing out on the screen literally, with one scene seeing a character realistically slump to the ground after being shot in the head, and another scene having a character react to receiving a head shot by somersaulting to their death.

Which brings me full circle back to my first paragraph – I said the audience for Demon City falls into 2 categories, and while it may be a disappointment to both, there’s actually a 3^rd category – the casual Netflix viewer looking to get their next action fix. From their perspective Tanaka’s sophomore feature may well fit the bill and, although I’m afraid to look, will no doubt invite some kind of comparison to the Japanese John Wick. From the perspective of it being the follow-up to a debut that showed there was a fresh new voice in Japanese cinema, Demon City for the most part feels like a generic follow up, lacking any of the touches that made Tanaka a talent to be excited about. Should a directors sophomore work be judged against their debut? There’s probably no right or wrong answer, but in my case, I was hoping for much more.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 5.5/10

The post Demon City (2025) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

Village of Doom | Blu-ray (Unearthed Films)

Director: Noboru Tanaka
Cast: Masato Furuoya, Misako Tanaka, Kumiko Oba, Isao Natsuyagi, Midori Satsuki
Running Time: 105 min.

By Paul Bramhall

The Tsuyama massacre remains one of the most harrowing mass murders in Japan, taking place on the night of 21^st May 1938 in the rural village of Kamocho Kurami. After cutting off the electricity to the village shortly before midnight, a 21-year-old man named Mutsuo Toi proceeded to arm himself to the teeth, and after decapitating his grandmother with an axe, spent the next 30 minutes murdering 29 of his neighbours (roughly half the villages population), before killing himself at dawn. As a country whose cinematic output isn’t afraid of exploring the darker parts of the human condition, it perhaps shouldn’t be too surprising that, 45 years after the incident, in 1983 it was adapted for the screen in the form of Village of Doom.

What is a surprise is that Noboru Tanaka was chosen as the director, a filmmaker who was most well known for being part of the Nikkatsu studio’s stable of Roman Porno directors, essentially the studios own in-house brand of pink film. With a filmography full of titles like Sensual Classroom: Techniques in Love, Beauty’s Exotic Dance: Torture!, and Pink Salon: Five Lewd Women, Tanaka hardly stands out as the obvious choice to helm a slice of real-life crime that cost so many innocent people their lives. However upon viewing Village of Doom the decision begins to make more sense, and would prove that Tanaka’s talents stretched beyond only helming erotica.

For the lead role Tanaka would cast Masato Furuoya, an actor who’d started out in many of the director’s pink film output during the late 70’s like Female Teacher and Rape and Death of a Housewife. By the early 80’s Furuoya had move onto more indie fare, headlining the likes of 1982’s The Lonely-Hearts Club Band in September, so his versatility as an actor was already well proven. For Village of Doom he plays a studious but naïve member of a small village community who lives with his elderly grandmother, having lost his parents at an early age due to illness. While many of the men in the village have already been conscripted into the military, the call for the academically talented Furuoya has yet to come, and with the village elders being resistant to outsiders, what’s left is a majority of lonely women, and a minority of horny men.

Initially it felt like Village of Doom was a kind of inversion of the 1967 Korean production Burning Mountain, which sees a North Korean army deserter hiding out in a small mountain village where most of the men have gone to war, and how he gradually becomes an object of desire for the women left behind. However while the focus of Kim Soo-yong’s production is told from that of the women, in Tanaka’s narrative the viewer is locked into Furuoya’s point of view. Far from resisting the military conscription, despite being on track for a career as a teacher Furuoya can’t wait for the opportunity to serve the Japanese Empire, and embraces the prospect of going to war. His nighttime studies are interrupted though when another friend clues him in to the after dark goings on of the village, which sees various villagers fornicating with each other regardless of their marital status, or even how closely related they are.

An ancient custom called yobai, it essentially involves the male entering the house of the female, and after giving consent they have sex, after which the man would leave. Basically you could say it’s the original one-night stand. Curiosity eventually gets the best of the virginial Furuoya, leading him to start engaging in the practice himself, and since many of the women are already married and older, he finds himself to be quite the hit. It’s during this stretch that Tanaka’s background as a helmer of pink film comes to the fore, with Furuoya getting it on with a couple of the villagers, and if a viewer wasn’t aware of the stories background, for all intents and purposes Village of Doom looks to play like a typical slice of erotica. Trouble arises though when Furuoya does get called up, only to be told by the military doctor that the niggling cough he’s been suffering from is tuberculosis, a fact which means he’s unfit to serve in the military.

With his dream shattered, things go from bad to worse when he returns to the village to find that word has already spread, and he now finds himself treated as an outcast who nobody wants to go near. Even his cousin, who he shares the closest thing to a romantic connection with, reveals that she’ll be marrying someone else, pushing Furuoya into a deeper and deeper state of anguish and despair. Indeed perhaps the most dangerous element of Tanaka’s interpretation of the events that unfolded on the fateful night is that, by telling them from the perspective of the perpetrator, at no point does Furuoya feel like the villain of the piece. In fact it’s quite the opposite, with his sexual awakening, and subsequent shunning, portraying him as a sympathetic figure who’s a victim of circumstance rather than a horrific monster who killed so many in cold blood.

It’s when he witnesses the village elders assaulting an outsider that Furuoya begins to suspect he’s next in their sights, and decides to take drastic measures to put an end to it. With 20 of the 105-minute runtime dedicated to the massacre, it’s an unflinching sequence that plays out practically in real time, switching alternately between Furuoya’s first person perspective or following him from behind. To his credit Tanaka makes it clear just how premeditated the killing spree was versus a crime of passion, with a scene that shows Furuoya pragmatically gear up, arming himself with a shotgun, katana, a dagger, and a pair of flashlights affixed to either side of his head. By this point he’s past the point of no return and resigned himself to become a demon, one who can achieve his dream of “going to war”, but it’s a war on his own terms with his neighbours painted as the enemy.

It’s a harrowing sequence, with the shaking beams from the flashlights catching the terrified expressions of those whom he’s targeted amidst the darkness, and Tanaka shows a skilled hand at gradually increasing the gore factor as the night progresses, throwing in a couple of practical effect money shots. As the audience there’s a deep sense of discomfort, which was likely the intention, with Tanaka allowing us to get to know Furuoya along with his hopes and dreams for the previous 85 minutes, so it almost feels like the narrative is challenging us to be on side with him in the bloodbath that eventually unfolds. Indeed towards the end of the night, he comes face to face with his cousin who he’d warned to stay away, and when she berates him as a devil he responds that “I’m a devil that got rid of other devils, that’s all.”

Arguably the most disorientating element of Village of Doom is Masanori Sasaji’s synthesiser driven soundtrack, which feels entirely out of step with the period that the story takes place in, and in certain parts wouldn’t feel out of place in a Hong Kong movie from the same era. Far from using the synthesiser to create a dark and foreboding atmosphere, the score is frequently upbeat even during the most harrowing moments, which makes it a welcome but undeniably bewildering choice as to what the intention was. It almost feels like Sasaji was told to score a romantic drama, with no idea what his tracks where actually going to be used for.

As an exercise in adapting a dark moment in Japan’s history Village of Doom ultimately succeeds, taking an uncomfortable subject like a mass killing, and maintaining an impartial lens that stops short of making excuses or glamourising the event. It’ll likely leave you with a slightly confused feeling in your stomach once the end credits roll, which may have been the idea, but what can’t be denied is that it’s a powerful and well-made piece of cinema, anchored by a powerhouse performance from Masato Furuoya.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 8/10

The post Village of Doom (1983) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“River” Theatrical Poster

Director: Junta Yamaguchi
Cast: Riko Fujitani, Yuki Torigoe, Yoshimasa Kondo, Haruki Nakagawa, Masahi Suwa
Running Time: 86 min. 

By Paul Bramhall

Making a follow-up to a debut that relied heavily on a gimmick is always a tricky proposition, as several directors have found out over the years. In Japan the most obvious example is Shinichiro Ueda, who after his almost flawless debut with 2017’s  One Cut of the Dead has struggled to replicate the winning formula with subsequent efforts, and in 2023 director Junta Yamaguchi released his sophomore feature River. Coming 3 years after Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes, Yamaguchi’s debut centered around a café owner realising the monitor in his room upstairs is capable of showing 2 minutes into the future, the inconsequence of which is utilised to amusing effect. In my review I’d mentioned how it uses the time travel plot device in a “more minutiae way than any of its predecessors (and perhaps anything that’ll come after it)”.

Well, with River I’ve already being proved wrong, as rather than try something completely new, Yamaguchi has returned to the concept of 2-minute time travel for his sophomore feature. He’s also stuck with Japan’s apparent time travel specialist script writer, Makoto Ueda, who penned Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes and 2005’s Summertime Machine Blues (which received a semi-sequel in 2022 in the form of the anime limited series Tatami Time Machine Blues). However with River it’s not just a couple of rooms experiencing the time glitch, but a whole town. To his credit, Yamaguchi isn’t repeating (pun intended) himself with his sophomore feature, but rather taking the idea of how to play with time travel in a cinematic sense, and both refining as well as being more ambitious with the concepts and scale Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes was limited to.

While in his debut the characters found themselves talking to themselves 2 minutes into the future through a TV screen, in River the concept is switched up to focus on a hot spring inn (or ryokan for you Japanophiles out there) in the rural village of Kibune, Kyoto that finds itself jumping back in time every 2 minutes (or as one character explains, it’s a time loop rather than a time leap). Here the characters “consciousness continues”, so while their physical location keeps on resetting to where they were 2 minutes prior, everyone is aware they’re stuck in a time loop. The scenario results in the narrative thrust becoming the characters attempts to stop the loop and make time revert back to normal service, but with only 2 minutes each time before everyone finds themselves back where they were, everyone starts to understandably become increasingly strained.

Yamaguchi gives himself a significantly broader canvas of characters to work with this time, with the closest thing to a main character coming in the form of Riko Fujitani (who also featured in Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes), playing a worker at the ryokan who we first meet (but will have met several times more by the time the credits roll) taking a breather at the river running along the back when the loop starts. Amongst the guests there’s a chef from the restaurant across the street taking a rest in one of the rooms (played by Yuki Torigoe – Bungo Stray Dogs the Movie: Beast), a frustrated writer (played by Yoshimasa Kondo – Love and Other Cults), and a whole bunch of returning cast members from Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes – including a persistent publicist (Haruki Nakagawa) and a couple of friends who used to be business associates (Masahi Suwa and Gota Ishida).

For his sophomore feature the notable difference from Yoshida’s debut is that there’s more of a focus on the human elements of the story, rather than a reliance purely on the technical execution of the gimmick to keep the audience engaged. It’s a welcome one, and makes the characters feel more relatable than those in Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes, with as much attention paid to how the time loop is affecting each one of them within the context of their own life, versus simply watching them react to the situation itself. It dawns on the writer that he has a deadline that’ll never come, the friends realise they have more time to drink together away from their busy schedules, and a romance that seemed to be coming to an end is placed on indefinite hold. Each character has a reason to cling onto the fact that time keeps going back on itself, but ultimately mileage varies as to how long they can enjoy it before tensions start to fray.

The broader scope of River also sees Yamaguchi expanding his palette to a variety of genres through the background of each guest, hanging them off the sci-fi framework the story takes place in, and therefore avoiding falling into the trap of being a one-trick pony. From comedy (including the funniest post-suicide scene you’re likely to ever see), to drama, to romance, and there’s an undeniable charm in River’s distinct Japanese-ness. Only in Japan would you see a scenario play out in such a way that after only the 3^rd loop (so 6 minutes in) the staff’s first thought is to attend to the guests, with one of the major dilemmas they have to overcome being that the warm sake the 2 friends ordered still isn’t warm enough to serve at the point that time loops back.

The seemingly trivial matters are what draws some of River’s best comedic moments during the first half of its punchy 85-minute runtime, including dealing with the writer whose taken to trashing the room he’s staying in, safe in the knowledge it’s going to reset back to exactly the way it was a few seconds later. While it’d be an exaggeration to say that the plot gets a lot more serious in the later half, it does at least present an emotional core as to why the time is looping, giving the audience a motivation anyone can empathise with, and in turn a deeper connection to what’s playing out onscreen. In fact Yamaguchi does this so well that it’s possible to dismiss how exhausting it must have been to actually film, considering that (and I didn’t count, but let’s just base it on the runtime) Fujitani in particular must have completed variations of the same take around 60 times.

Indeed while River is still a low budget affair (although it’s clearly got more funding behind it than Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes, which was shot entirely on an iPhone!), once more it’s the skill of a filmmaker like Yamaguchi who proves that budgetary constraints don’t always need to be a barrier to creativity. It’s a credit to both those behind the camera and in front of it that not once does the illusion of the 2-minute loop break, with the concept remaining entirely believable from start to finish. As the anchor of the piece Fujitani serves as an effective audience avatar and makes for an endearing screen presence, clocking in a leading role that’ll hopefully act as a calling card that means we’ll see more of her. From the cool and collected approach she initially takes to the situation, to the increasing toll it begins to take once the source of the loop is revealed, she’s a joy to watch.

Ultimately the finale makes a connection to the same universe that Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes takes place in, and while on initial viewing I felt disappointed that it didn’t follow through on some of the reasoning presented earlier, on 2nd viewing I realised it doesn’t actually change any of the ideas presented. The metaphor of the flowing river may be an obvious one (the full Japanese title translates to River, Don’t Drift Away), however Yamaguchi delivers it in a way that’s bound to resonate. Crafting a tale that uses its sci-fi leanings to acknowledge the comfort in the familiar trappings we sometime seek as humans, and the inevitable hurdles we place in front of ourselves if we never seek to explore outside of them. In the end it’s the decision we make to move forward and push on into the unknown that makes us who we are, and in turn River serves as a light-hearted microcosm for life itself.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 8/10

The post River (2023) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“King Kong Escapes” Theatrical Poster

Director: Honda Ishiro
Cast: Rhodes Reason, Linda Miller, Mie Hama, Akira Takarada, Hideyo Amamoto, Yoshifumi Tajima, Yoshifumi Tajima, Andrew Hughes, Shoichi Hirose, Ryuji Kita
Running Time: 96/104 min.

By Ian Whittle

Following the colossal success of King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962), Toho did not rush to bring back the giant ape in a hurry – the cost of licensing the character from RKO was high, and Toho had been left holding the bill by KKvG’s American co-producer, John Beck. But by 1966, American animation company Rankin-Bass had produced The King Kong Show in collaboration with Japan’s Toei Animation and a new live action Kong film was put into development between Rankin-Bass and Toho. Sekizawa Shinichi’s original script, Operation Robinson Crusoe: King Kong, was rejected and instead turned into the Godzilla film Ebirah, Horror of the Deep – which explain why that film has a scene where Godzilla takes an interest in a bikini-clad island girl.

Whilst Ebirah was in effect a B-movie, the resultant King Kong Escapes was very much top-grade, with direction (Honda Ishiro), music (Ifukube Akira) and SPFX direction (Tsuburaya Eiji) all being handled by Toho’s main monster specialists, in what would turn out to their final true collaboration.

Escapes is not a continuation of KKvG, and instead acts for the first 20 min or so as a potted remake of the 1933 original. A UN submarine lands on the mysterious Mondo Island, which Commander Carl Nelson (token US import Rhodes Reason) knows to be home to the legendary King Kong – Nelson being the sort of UN submarine captain who is also a big old Monster Kid. Barely have they arrived, then the sub’s nurse, Susan (Linda Miller, a Japanese based model dubbed in the US version with a child-like squawk by Julie Bennet) is attacked by a Tyrannosaurus Rex (Sekita Hiroshi) with a kangaroo kick (that the following year’s Destroy All Monsters would name Gorosaurus). Luckily, King Kong (Nakajima Harou) is no legend and he saves, and naturally falls in love with her (something sadly lacking in the most recent Kong pictures, but to be fair if Kong fancying a woman the relative size of a Barbie doll was pushing it, Kong and a girl the size of an ant is too yucky to contemplate!). And because the 1933 did the same, Kong also fights off a sea serpent (which here make a weird bird-like sound), but no pterodactyl this time! And for the record, whereas Skull Island in the 1933 film (and Faro Island in KKvG) had a whole tribe of Africans (in the South Seas?), Mondo Island’s human population is one crazy old man (Sawamura Ikio), possibly named Ben Gunn.

Meanwhile, at the North Pole, nefarious international crooks under the command of one Madame X (Hama Mie, who was a Bond girl in the same year’s You Only Live Twice) are attempting to mine the rare Element X…with a giant mechanical Kong doppelganger, Mechani-Kong (also Sekita). Created by Doctor Who (Amamato Eisei). I swear I’m not making any of this up.

Now, Doctor Who was a character in The King Kong Show, where he was a bald bespectacled man with a large cranium dressed in a lab coat. Yes, totally nothing like Professor Farnsworth from Futurama. But, for some reason, in King Kong Escapes he is a dead ringer for William Hartnell as Doctor Who in the BBC sci-fi series (which, in 1967, had yet to be broadcast in the USA or Japan)  -the long white hair, the black Astrakhan hat and cape, the badly crooked fang-like teeth are all there! I’d be fascinated to know the reason behind this – it may be something as trivial as the Toho costume designer being given the wrong picture from the reference library – and Who, dubbed in the US version by the great Paul Frees (who voiced everything from the voice-of-doom narrator in the 1953 The War of the Worlds to Hanna-Barbera’s Squiddily Diddily) is far and away the best thing in the whole movie.

Since Element X short-circuits Mechani-Kong, Who rationalises that the only other possible way to extract the element is the real Kong. I’d have suggested a drill and crane, but then I only have a Masters, and that’s in Librarianship to boot. So Who kidnaps Kong, and the submarine crew to boot, but Kong escapes (duh!) and is pursued to Tokyo by Mechani-Kong for a climatic fight atop Tokyo Tower.

It’s just as well the film is such delirious fun, because as a Kong film, it’s somewhat lacking. Whilst the principal new suit does a better job of hiding the human shape of the actor, the face is ghastly, with large glassy eyes that make Kong appear perpetually stoned – indeed our first sight of him is a close-up of those eyes, which resemble fried-eggs with cataracts. The back-up suit used for stunt sequences that required Nakajima to use his real arms is even worse, looking uncannily like Animal from The Muppets. One wouldn’t think that Toho could have come with a worse gorilla suit than the road-kill Kong of KKvG but they found a way…and this is all the more frustrating when one considers their excellent ape-man suits from the previous year’s The War of the Gargantuas. Thankfully, Gorosaurus is much better (a clever way of building a dinosaur suit that doesn’t look too humanoid), and even if Mechani-Kong looks like a toy, he looks like an awesome toy.

Indeed, that is the overall effect of the film. It’s pretty feeble as a dramatic sci-fi picture (no matter how hard Ifukube tries to sell it as such with his downbeat music) but as a filming of the best toy-box a 60s kid could dream of, this is undeniably charming in spite of its flaws.

And speaking of Muppets, looks like Mechani-Kong got work after this…

Ian Whittle’s Rating: 7/10

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“Baby Assassins 2” Poster

AKA: Baby Assassins: 2 Babies
Director: Yugo Sakamoto
Cast: Akari Takaishi, Saori Izawa, Joey Iwanaga, Tatsuomi Hamada, Atomu Mizuishi
Running Time: 101 min. 

By Paul Bramhall

I confess I wasn’t the biggest fan of Yugo Sakamoto’s Baby Assassins, concluding that the 2021 production “will likely only appeal to those action fans who are willing to wait (or perhaps skip forward) to see Masanori Mimoto unleash under the choreography of Kensuke Somomura.” However I’m all for giving 2^nd chances, and there was just enough potential in the first instalment to make me curious enough to come back for more.

Sakamoto certainly hasn’t been resting on his laurels in the short timeframe between the original and the sequels release, with his seeming ambition to create an assassin’s universe of movies and shorts continuing to grow. Since the release of Baby Assassins he expanded his short The Legend of the Strongest Hitman: Kunioka into a feature length production, and the end result was an entertainingly meta-take on the genre. The story sees Sakamoto cast a fictional version of himself, one who decides to find inspiration to help finish the script for Baby Assassins by following around a real hitman, and the chaos that ensues. Blurring the lines further, 2022’s Green Bullet focuses on six girls being trained to be assassins by the same Kunioka, essentially creating 2 parallel hitman universes – the one Sakamoto created (Baby Assassins), and the one he’s projected himself into! Expect some multiverse madness if we ever get a Baby Assassins 3!

Baby Assassins 2 sees the return of the 2 teenage slacker assassins played by Akari Takaishi (My Happy Marriage, Single8) and Saori Izawa (A Janitor, Re:Born), who since the original has notched up the notable credit of being the stunt double for Rina Sawayama in John Wick: Chapter 4. Sakamoto is back both on director and script duties, and subverts expectations from the get-go by instead choosing to focus on a pair of male assassins. Played by Joey Iwanaga (Lion Girl, Enter the Fat Dragon) and Ultraman regular Tatsuomi Hamada, the opening scene sees one of their hits go awry when their target, who they were expecting to be alone, turns out to have the company of 4 acquaintances. A frantically scrappy fight breaks out as 2 go up against 5, with the pair getting the job done, but not without incurring a few cuts and bruises.

When it turns out they assassinated the wrong guy, the fact that they’re not members of the Assassins Guild means they basically did the job for free. Tired of being freelancers and knowing that the Guild’s membership is full, after hearing a rumour that openings are created when members bite the dust, the pair hatch a plot to off a pair of assassins who are in the Guild, and it’s Takaishi and Izawa who find themselves as their targets. That’s essentially the plot, however much like in the original, it’s not so much the plot itself that provides the narrative thrust, as it is the more mundane daily struggles of Takaishi and Izawa that are expected to deliver the entertainment value.

There was a self-aware level of intended cool and forced quirkiness in Baby Assassins that I found particularly grating, which combined with the fact Takaishi and Izawa’s defining characteristic seemed to be their laziness, felt like there wasn’t much left of redeeming value outside of the action. Thankfully Sakamoto has struck a much more satisfying balance with the sequel, especially in the pair’s characterisation. Takaishi is still loud, but it no longer feels obnoxious, and Izawa here is much more vocal, and therefore feels more like a real character, a stark comparison to her monosyllabic mumbling in the original (and let’s face it, any change that makes you sound less like a female version of Steven Seagal is a plus).

The pairs predicament is essentially the same as before, having been suspended from active duty by the Guild after preventing a bank robbery (getting involved in non-Guild approved hits is a big no), they once more find themselves needing to resort to part-time jobs to sustain an income. While in the original their job hunt came from having to start paying rent once the Guild’s financial assistance stopped on their 18^th birthdays, which served to hardly make them the most empathetic protagonists, the sequel goes for a much more relatable issue – they’ve forgotten to pay the gym memberships they signed up for 5 years ago and only went to once. Much like the original it’s these detours which make up the crux of the sequel, as Iwanaga and Hamada stalk them in the background, a narrative decision that means the 2 pairs don’t meet each other until almost an hour in.

However this time the blasé approach to narrative structure is much more effective. Iwanaga and Hamada’s hairbrained plan to kill another pair of assassins just to get into the Guild is portrayed like any other workplace scenario where employees hope for a promotion. The only difference is in their line of work it involves killing, a fact which is more amusing when it becomes clear they’re not actually all that good at it either. Played off against Takaishi and Izawa attempting to hold down a job dressed up as animal mascots, the idea that Iwanaga and Hamada would rather be in their position becomes increasingly ludicrous.

As expected Sakamoto has once more brought onboard Japan’s busiest action director to choreograph the fights in the form of Kensuke Sonomura, clocking in his first gig in a year which would go on to see him also choreograph Tak Sakaguchi in One Percenter. While the fight action is far from constant, what’s there is all top shelf. The opening scrap that sees Iwanaga and Hamada tussle against 5 attackers in the confines of a cramped unit feels like it’s straight out of a Korean gangster movie in its frenzied desperation. Special mention should go to one of the comedic highlights, which sees tensions boil over between Takaishi and Izawa while in their mascot suits, the result of which sees a tiger versus panda throwdown in the middle of the street. The scene may actually trump Jean Claude Van Damme fighting a penguin in Sudden Death as the greatest mascot fight committed to film (although is there any other competition out there!?).

As in the original for the finale the heavy lifting is placed on the shoulders of Izawa, who this time swaps out Masanori Mimoto as an opponent for Iwanaga, an actor who has a legitimate action pedigree shown off in the likes of Rurouni Kenshin: Final Chapter Part 1 – The Final and Dancing Karate Kid. The one on one delivers the typical Sonomura flair and is satisfyingly lengthy, only really let down by an odd creative choice that interrupts the flow and doesn’t quite work the way it was probably intended. However it’s a minor gripe, and both Izawa and Iwanaga give it everything they’ve got with more feigns that you can shake a stick at, leading to a conclusion that I enjoyed didn’t fall into any typical Hollywood trappings, staying true to the premise of the characters.

Not everything is smooth sailing in the sequel, with any time a gun fight breaks out the inability for anyone to shoot each other, even when apparently shooting at point blank range, inevitably feels slightly off. It may have been forgivable if they were playing any other role, but considering we’re supposed to be watching assassins it makes the issue all the more glaring. There’s also a contender for the most pointless post-credit scene ever, consisting of a conversation that harks back to the kind of self-aware quirky banter that plagued so much of the original, and adds precisely nothing to the experience. Thankfully though there’s always the option to walk away before the scene plays.

All in all though Baby Assassins 2 improves on its predecessor in every way, with the addition of the male assassins being a welcome one, especially Iwanaga who conveys a natural charisma and screen presence that’s often missing from these mid-budget productions. In my review for Baby Assassins I’d debated of what the chances would be of seeing Izawa show off her talents again in the near future, so to only have to wait 2 years again to see her in action is a welcome surprise. Breezy and occasionally bloody, the result is a sequel that’s well worth checking out.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 6.5/10

The post Baby Assassins 2 (2023) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“One-Percent Warrior” Theatrical Poster

AKA: 1%er
Director: Yudai Yamaguchi
Cast: Tak Sakaguchi, Kohei Fukuyama, Harumi Kanon, Taro Suruga, Togo Ishii, Sho Aoyagi, Itsuji Itao, Kenjiro Ishimaru, Keisuke Horibe, Ohji Hiroi
Running Time: 85 min.

By Paul Bramhall

One-Percent Warrior offers up a welcome reunion of 3 of Japan’s most prominent names in action cinema, director Yudai Yamaguchi, star Tak Sakaguchi, and choreographer Kensuke Sonomura. The last time the trio crossed paths in the same capacity was on the 2011 Sushi Typhoon double whammy of Yakuza Weapon and Dead Ball (which saw Yamaguchi remaking his own Battlefield Baseball from 2003, also starring Takaguchi), so it feels like cause for excitement to see them unexpectedly reunite 12 years later.

Things have changed a lot in the time that’s passed. Yamaguchi has mainly stuck to TV work, with his occasional ventures back into filmmaking coming with such inspired titles as Chin-Yu-Ki: The Journey to the West with Farts. Tak Sakaguchi famously retired from action filmmaking in 2016 with Re:Born, and subsequently proceeded to turn up in so many action movies since that we’re already into double figures, including 2020’s Crazy Samurai Musashi (which used a 77 minute one-take fight sequence he shot in 2011 from an abandoned Sono Sion project) and most recently Bad City. Notably it’s Sonomura who directed Bad City, his sophomore directorial feature after 2019’s Hydra, who has really come into his own as a fight choreographer since last working with the pair. His stellar fight work is on display in both of his directorial efforts, as well as the likes of Yugo Sakamoto’s Baby Assassins and its sequel.

Their latest collaboration takes a decidedly meta-approach to the action genre, opening with a series of interview clips and behind-the-scenes footage (from what appears to be Re:Born) that blurs reality and fiction, with several of the talking heads espousing the virtues of the action movie star Sakaguchi plays. Sakaguchi gripes to the camera about how there’s no realism in action scenes these days, and so to counter it he’s made his own style of onscreen combat called ‘Realism Action’. Since his last hit with Birth 10 years ago he’s been developing his existing martial arts style of “assassination-jutsu”, and the result is the creation of the enigmatic sounding wave technique. Remember when I referred to Sakaguchi’s martial arts style in Re:Born as a “crinkly clothed samba”? That’s the wave technique, and here he not only reveals how the technique can be used to dodge bullets (finally!), but also how it even has its own one-inch punch!

With such a hardcore approach to filming action though Sakaguchi has become devoid of disciples, with only one sticking by him, a loyal apprentice played by Kohei Fukuyama (High & Low: The Worst). When his latest bad guy gig turns sour because the lead can’t keep up with him (in a hilarious scene that’s obviously sending up the action in the Rurouni Kenshin franchise), Sakaguchi decides it’s time to film a “100% pure action film”, and so he and Fukuyama end up in an abandoned old zinc factory on an island to start scouting locations. It’s while there that they’re interrupted by a gang of yakuza, who’ve kidnapped the daughter of a rival yakuza boss who recently passed away, knowing that he hid a sizable stash of cocaine somewhere on the island. Threatening to kill her if she doesn’t reveal its location, Sakaguchi soon realises it’s a chance for him to step into the role he believes he was born to play, and tells Fukuyama to “Film the whole thing.”

This setup basically allows the last hour of One-Percent Warrior’s punchy 85-minute runtime to be one continuous action sequence, as Sakaguchi stalks the corridors and open spaces of the factory, picking off the “retired commandos” that the father and daughter yakuza bosses have brought along with them. The daughter is played by a scene stealing Harumi Kanon, here making her debut as a ruthless psychopath with a prosthetic leg, who’s reason for wanting to bring the late yakuza bosses’ daughter along turns out to be very different than what we’re initially led to believe. When one of the lackeys explains how they were taken out by Sakaguchi, her response is to ask, “Are you telling me Jackie Chan’s here!?”, which sees Sakaguchi being amusingly referred to as Jackie Chan for the duration, despite his plea that he prefers Bruce Lee.

Clocking in a similarly noteworthy performance is Taro Suruga (Hard Days), who plays a fight choreographer working on a “Chinese funded blockbuster” and comes with his own stunt team (the hilariously named Tony Stunts, of whom Hydra’s Masanori Mimoto is a member!), believing that Sakaguchi’s style of action is too demanding to be sustainable. In a way his approach ties into the meaning of the title One-Percent Warrior, which Sakaguchi explains is a reference to the number of students who study their art long enough to become a true master of it. Suruga drops the concept of a one-take sequence after the first attempt goes wrong, deciding to film it in multiple close-up cuts instead, while Sakaguchi refuses to compromise on his vision of making a pure action film.

This is the 2^nd time to see Sakaguchi choreographed by Sonomura in as many years, and for those who didn’t feel they got enough of him in action in Bad City, One-Percent Warrior will definitely scratch the itch. Like the character he plays, Sakaguchi has been constantly developing his action style over the years, from the padded gloves of Death Trance to allow for full contact hitting, to the Zero Range Combat of Re:Born, here is probably the closest we’ll get to seeing his offscreen philosophies transferred onscreen. There’s a couple of group melee’s that stand out, one involving the use of a monkey wrench that marks the first time I’ve seen the intended functionality of a wrench be successfully incorporated into a fight, and the other utilising a flashlight as much to blind as to cause blunt force trauma (setting the latter to the dreamy refrains of Debussy’s Clair de Lune providing an unexpected compliment to the onscreen violence).

The real highlight though belongs to the final one-on-one which sees him face off against Jeet Kune Do instructor Togo Ishii. As a fight it successfully blends Sakaguchi’s distinctive post-Re:Born style with what I like to call Sonomura’s mastery of ‘rustle-fu’ – that is, fights that are allowed to play out minus any soundtrack, and instead rely purely on the sound and movements of the actors to generate excitement. After making quick work of anyone he comes across so far, Ishii gives Sakaguchi a legitimate run for his money as an opponent, and the speed of which they exchange fists and feet with each other brought a legitimate smile to my face. This is Ishii’s first foray into the film industry, and while his bodyguard remains silent, his singular fight scene is enough to leave a lasting impression, resulting in what I’d be willing to argue is the best one-on-one fight of Sakaguchi’s 23-year career.

The final reel of One-Percent Warrior goes in a surprisingly bittersweet direction, offering a take on what it means to strive at being best in what you do, while never straying from the core concept of what drives an action star to be who they are. It may only have a fraction of the budget a production like Ride On had, which offered similar musings on what it means to be a part of action cinema, however Yamaguchi’s latest has a sincerity to it which Jackie Chan’s take on the same theme lacked, making it easy to look past its budgetary limitations. Capturing the viewpoint of an action star in a way which feels far more authentic and intimate, the closing scene is ultimately just as memorable as the fight action.

As an exercise in meta-filmmaking meets martial arts action cinema One-Percent Warrior manages to strike an entertaining balance, even throwing in some welcome humor (a conversation implying the shame of going either DTV or straight to streaming being particularly funny). At one point Sakaguchi is asked “You’re an actor, an action film actor right?” Perhaps now more than ever we can say the answer is yes, with not even his own self-declared retirement being able to stop him from continuing to embrace new ways of bringing hand to hand combat to the screen. To that end, One-Percent Warrior undoubtably delivers.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 7/10

The post One-Percent Warrior | aka One Percenter (2023) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Pistol Opera” Theatrical Poster

Director: Seijun Suzuki
Cast: Makiko Esumi, Sayoko Yamaguchi, Kirin Kiki, Mikijiro Hira, Masatoshi Nagase, Kenji Sawada, Hanae Kan, Jan Woudstra, Haruko Kato, Kensaku Watanabe
Running Time: 112 min.

By Martin Sandison

Seijun Suzuki’s 1967 art-yakuza classic Branded to Kill has a hallowed place in movie history. It was deemed too experimental by Nikkatsu, who produced the picture and for whom Suzuki had made many low budget formulaic efforts previously, and he was promptly dismissed. It went on to influence generations of film-makers subsequently, most notably Quentin Tarantino and my favourite director John Woo. Branded to Kill was also my entrance into the Yakuza genre, as I caught it on the big screen back in 2006 in a Japanese cult film season that changed my life, alongside such greats as Sword of Doom and Hausu. Having revisited the film on Blu-ray it captivated me again, and now I have also revisited Suzuki’s own remake, Pistol Opera. One of his last efforts before he passed in 2017, the film is a distillation of Suzuki’s style, to the point that it’s like watching a recent Wes Anderson film: there’s much to admire, but the heart isn’t there as it used to be.

Pistol Opera takes the basic plot of Branded to Kill, that of a killer who is in competition with other assassins that operate as part of the mysterious guild. This time instead of Joe Shishido’s debonair yet eccentric Goro Hanada we have Makiko Esumi as the female protagonist Miyuki Minazuki. As others have noted, trying to outline what happens in the movie is near-impossible, without saying things get progressively more surreal as Makiko takes on the killers in set piece after set piece, and the structure is like that of a series of vignettes.

These mini-stories seem to have their own conclusions, in that Makiko is shot at the end of some, and survives others, only to appear in the next scene as if nothing has happened. However… the dialogue makes reference to what has happened previously, meaning there is some kind of internal logic in place. At the time Suzuki hadn’t made a film in 8 years, and it’s like he wanted to cram every idea he had into the almost 2 hour runtime. The film is like a fever dream, and can be distilled to this, in my head: an art installation crossed with a motion picture. All of the aspects of film-making that Suzuki has at his disposal work together to achieve this, and it’s admirable that he attempted and pulled off the feat of trying something so different. 

Visual treats like an apparent after-life framed by a golden-lighted river, a gunfight taking place in a forest with a background of yellow paint smog, the pop art credit sequence that is oh-so 60s and the increasingly phantasmagorical ending convey a wonderful cinematic mind at play. The problem that starts early in the film is that in between these nuggets are standardly shot monologues or strange uninteresting scenes that had me drifting off into my thoughts. It’s a real shame, because when the good bits start, they are completely immersive. 

The surrealism at play in Pistol Opera is innately Japanese, with scenes staged like a Kabuki play, an ancient art form that concentrates on the bizarre featuring fantastical costumes. This is combined with modern dance, pop art, a jazz and reggae soundtrack and an artistic approach to visuals. Elements like revolving doors featuring characters, with paintings on other sides, hanging doll-like mannequins and cherry blossoms being shot at reminded me of modern art exhibitions I’ve attended. Albeit these didn’t include stylised gunfights.

Those expecting action in the John Woo mould may be disappointed. The sequences are impressions of violence, in a theatrical sense. No blood is spilled, and there is a healthy dose of the absurd at play. In one scene Makiko gets another killer to impale his own heart with a dagger, which is obviously a toy with a retractable blade. I did find these scenes intriguing and at times powerful, despite being an action junkie at heart.

I’ve seen a handful of Suzuki’s flicks throughout the years, and the one that stood out the most is Tokyo Drifter. A wild blend of 60s pop art and a more commercial style, it’s a fun ride. Pistol Opera and its source material Branded to Kill require patience and an inclination for more highbrow cinema. Despite this, and having a love for arthouse films, I still found sections of both films boring. It’s worth the deep dive, though.

Martin Sandison’s Rating: 6.5/10

The post Pistol Opera (2001) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Haunted Samurai” Theatrical Poster

Director: Keiichi Ozawa
Cast: Hideki Takahashi, Masako Izumi, Isao Natsuyagi, Seiichiro Kameishi, Shoki Fukae, Yûji Odaka, Eiji Go, Masaya Oka, Utako Shibusawa, Maya Kitajima
Running Time: 83 min.

By Will McGuire

Haunted Samurai is the perfect companion to a Lone Wolf and Cub movie marathon. This 1970 saga of evil Yagyu ninjas and noble samurai straining between the rigors of their code and the needs of their conscience feels like it takes place around the corner from the 1972 chambara classic Sword of Vengeance. That shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise given that both films are derived from the work of legendary manga creator Goseki Kojima, and both bear his striking ability to dramatize the ruthless amorality of the historical samurai against raw human problems– the heart in conflict with itself.

What I found fascinating upon watching the Diabolik Blu-ray release of the film for the first time was how the central conceit of the film both echoed, and was diametrically opposed to that of its more famous Baby Cart brothers: Rokuheita Kusanagi (Hideki Takahashi) is an enforcer for the brutal Yagyu clan charged with killing deserters, and leaving their bones to be picked apart by the crows as a warning. When his most recent execution results in the suicide of his own sister, he decides to allow his next target, a family man whose son runs into the middle of the duel, to live.

You can see where this is going: the Yagyu killer who was charged with eliminating deserters, has effectively deserted his own post and the clan, which is so ruthless they deny deserters a burial as a warning, now must make an example out of the man they trained to make examples out of people. It has the same ironic twist as Itto Ogami going from the Shogun’s executioner to a disgraced ronin who refuses to take his own life after being dishonored but from the opposite moral direction. Ogami would have continued beheading anyone he was ordered to until the Yagyu framed him. Kusanagi, on the other hand, has awakened from his moral decay. Takahashi’s performance almost recalls a Western hero who has hung up his six shooters, or Bruce Lee in the first act of The Big Boss who has forsworn fighting on an oath to his mother.

Kusanagi is primarily pursued by Kyonosuke (Isao Natsuyagi) who I really like as both a character and a performance. Kyonosuke is a servant of the Yagyu clan, but he is more concerned with the excellence of Kusanagi’s technique and his capacity to test his own limits against him rather than getting the job done by any means necessary. These two characters are technically ninjas, but for all intents and purposes, they act as Samurai and more specifically: duellists. Their final showdown is set against the backdrop of a total solar eclipse as if the heavens themselves recognize the enormity of the skill on display and take away everyone else’s ability to witness it. This began as a clan struggle but by the film’s end, it is entirely personal and also ironically, almost without malice.

The film is advertised on the Blu-ray as “the bloodiest ninja film of the time” and while it predates the Lone Wolf and Cub films that really upped the blood for chambara it doesn’t feel significantly more violent than the contemporary Zatoichi pictures. If you’re considering this film because you’re looking for gonzo shlock you’re not going to get what you want here outside of the scene where Kusanagi takes on a whole cadre of topless female warriors. This feels much more classical and, as mentioned above, the arc of the story lends the picture an almost cowboy feel. This could have been turned into a Western by Hollywood with very, very few changes.

There’s an irony there: we might expect a Diabolik release to be a real blood-and-guts affair but what we get here is a film that could easily fit into Arrow or even Eureka’s library of recent Asian releases. It is not a great film, it has a few editing issues, but it is only one notch below – and it represents an easy recommendation.

Will McGuire’s Rating: 8/10

The post Haunted Samurai (1970) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“The Revenge of Dr. X” Theatrical Poster

AKA: Body of the Prey
Director: Norman Thomson
Cast: James Craig, James Yagi, Atsuko Rome, Lawrence O’Neill, Al Ricketts, John Stanley
Running Time: 94 min. 

By Ian Whittle

Well, this is a head-scratcher. An Ed Wood written 50s monster movie script, Venus Fly-Trap, produced in 60s Japan as Body of the Prey by a former Orson Welles associate…with funds and possibly a monster suit likely supplied by Toei, who denies all acknowledge! The Japanese title translates as The Devil’s Garden, but due to a mis-translation became known as Double Garden! And by the time the film finally saw the light of day in the mid-80s, courtesy of Regal Home Video (a furniture company subsidiary), the lack of any opening credits on their source wasn’t a hindrance. They simply took the credits from The Revenge of Dr. X, a re-issue version of 60s Filipino gore-shocker Mad Doctor of Blood Island. So apologies to any John Ashley or Angelique Pettyjohn fans…they ain’t in the movie!

Whew!

James Craig (formally the star of classics such as The Devil and Daniel Webster, so a very long way from grace here) plays perennially cheesed-off NASA rocket scientist Dr. Bragan. Following one set-back too many, the raging Bragan receives a suggestion from his long-suffering assistant (James Yagi, formally one of the stars of the atrocious new American scenes inserted into King Kong vs. Godzilla, so this is probably a step-up) to take a vacation in Japan. Bragan travels to Japan, but not before stopping out at a Floridan garage to buy a Venus fly-trap (as you do), said garage being blatantly in front of Mount Fuji! Once in Japan for real, he meets up with his assistant’s attractive cousin Noriko (Atsuko Rome, who doesn’t seem to have worked again!) who takes him to her home…an abandoned hotel in the shadow of a volcano, staffed by one cackling hunchback!

In the best mad scientist tradition, it turns out that Dr. Bragan is not only a rocket scientist but also a botanist, and he decides to use his vacation to start tampering in God’s domain…to prove than mankind descended from the plants! Gene-splicing the American Venus Fly-trap with a Japanese carnivorous aquatic plant, the resultant creature (thanks to some good old lightning) is a humanoid plant monster, complete with a tail and claw-hands that look suspiciously like customised boxing gloves!

Ed Wood never met a purple phrase he didn’t like, and his fingerprints are all over the dialogue, most of which seems to be derived from half remembered bits of Universal Frankenstein movies (frequent allusions to lightning being the father of the monster). Adding to the hilarity is James Craig’s tendency to growl out his lines with a frustration that borders on apoplexy – a sample gem being ” How in the hell can anybody be so utterly stupid as to build a rocket base on the coast of Florida?” Craig’s feral performance suggests that Norman Thomson is no Ed Wood…as we all learnt from Tim Burton’s bio-pic, the best advise you can give any actor is “No, you’re not that upset! You want to keep moving. You’ve got to go through that door!” 

The Japanese nature of the production certainly lends visual novelty beyond what a American production of the same vintage would have done. The locations are stunning, as are the topless Ama diving girls (who I assume weren’t in the original script!), and even eccentricities like the baroque hunchback feel more disturbing and exaggerated than one would expect to find in your garden-variety 60s monster movie. The monster wouldn’t be out of place in an episode of Ultraman…if it turns out the suit was recycled from a Tokusatu production, I would not be surprised!

Quite why such a bonkers production was kept hidden from the public is one of life’s mysteries…I mean, yes, it’s terrible but as we all know, that is no hindrance to getting a prompt theatrical release. And there is still time for Tim Burton to do a sequel to Ed Wood, showing the increasingly alcohol bloated director wheeping into his Angora sweater as some hack ruins his masterpiece about a killer Venus Fly-tap monster with tangents about diving girls, whilst the lead actor gets more and more upset…

Ian Whittle’s Rating: 3/10

The post Revenge of Dr. X, The (1967) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

Lion-Girl | Blu-ray (Cleopatra)

Director: Kurando Mitsutake
Cast: Tori Griffiths, David Sakurai, Katarina Leigh Waters, Derek Mears, Stefanie Estes, Julie Burrise, Erin Marie Hogan, Shelby Lee Parks, Hidetoshi Imura, Kirk Geiger, Akihiro Kitamura, Wes Armstrong, Taishi Tamaki
Running Time: 121 min.

By Paul Bramhall

It’s fair to say that for most of the 2020’s audiences have grown fatigued to the endless superhero fodder that’s dominated cinema screens for the past 15 years, with reboots, sequels, retcons, and just about any other word that connects franchises together being released at a relentless pace. So it may seem like a risky move for director Kurando Mitsutake to make his newest movie exactly that – a superhero movie – but then, Mitsutake can hardly be described as just being any old director.

Since his debut with 2009’s Samurai Avenger: The Blind Wolf, the California based Mitsutake has consistently proven himself to be the 21st century version of the kind of Japanese filmmaker that existed exclusively in the 1970’s – dabbling in obsolete genres like pinky violence and karate exploitation like they never went out of fashion. Hopefully nobody bothers to tell him that they did, otherwise we wouldn’t have titles like Gun Woman, Karate Kill, or Maniac Driver to enjoy, and the cinematic world would be a duller place for it.

Lion Girl is the latest production to find Mitsutake in the director’s chair, 3 years after his pink eiga Maniac Driver, and it proves to be his most ambitious work to date, for the first time clocking in over the 2-hour mark (even if it is just by 1 minute). For fans of manga there’s a significant draw through the fact that both the design and concept of Lion Girl comes courtesy of legendary manga artist and author Go Nagai, whose list of creations include the likes of Cutie Honey, Devilman, and Mazinger Z – names that are likely familiar even to casual Asian cinema fans. The equivalent of the late Stan Lee providing the proof of concept and design for a Lloyd Kaufman movie, the blending of 2 artistic talents who have such distinctive styles was always going to be an interesting one.

What’s perhaps most interesting is that Lion Girl marks what can essentially be viewed as Mitsutake’s first production where the primary spoken language is English. While his other movies have tended to have a mix of both Japanese and English, this is the first time for the main character to be American. Tori Griffiths is cast in the titular role, a TV movie stalwart who seems to specialise in the disaster genre, playing a recurring character in the Jared Cohn directed Super Volcano, 20.0 Megaquake, and Ice Storm! As Lion Girl she represents humanities last stand against the fearful anoroc’s – humans who’ve gone through a “metamorphosis into meteorite beasts” and drain peoples life force, a result of being exposed to rock cells from a meteor shower that left most of the planet underwater. With Tokyo being one of the few remaining liveable land masses, the remnants of the world’s population headed to the Land of the Rising Sun.

Set in 2045 in the aftermath of a 30-year civil war, a Neo Nippon Shogunate now rules over what’s left of Japan, with Griffiths’ character the heir to a yakuza clan destined to be the “last defender of ninkyo”. Known as a man-anoroc due to being born from an anoroc mother (think Blade in terms of her powers origins), when a powerful member of the Shogunate starts hunting man-anoroc’s to absorb their power for himself, it’s up to Lion Girl to step up and create a “man-anoroc yakuza squad” to fight back.

The results are always interesting when manga-based source material gets the English language live action treatment, with the likes of Ghost in the Shell, Kite, and Fist of the North Star all proving to be divisive with audiences. In terms of tone, if you were forced to compare, then unsurprisingly Lion Girl would most closely resemble Fist of the North Star. From its pulpy narrative, post-apocalyptic setting, and lo-fi special effects, Mitsutake makes it clear from the first frame that we’re not supposed to be taking things too seriously.

Just in case anyone forgot that his last production was basically a pink eiga by any other name, Lion Girl opens in a public bath which sees a group of anoroc in human form surround Griffiths, who sits with her back to them. Containing both male and female full-frontal nudity, even before the title has appeared onscreen we’ve already seen a healthy dose of skin, topped off with entertainingly practical special effects to show the anoroc transformation to “meteorite beast”.

What follows is 2 hours of jiggly flesh, martial arts posturing, and hilariously foul-mouthed villains that’s probably best described as a mix of Troma meets V-Cinema, with the latter at least being legitimately true due to the involvement of Toei Video. Passing off the dusty surrounds of L.A. for post-apocalyptic Tokyo, Mitsutake creates a surreal landscape that feels at once alien and familiar, while heavily leaning into the female led V-Cinema action flicks that populated the 2000’s. It’s fair to say Griffiths spends almost as much time out of her clothes as she does in them, with her reliance on needing a high body temperature to activate the full back tattoo that grants her powers offering up plenty of opportunities to disrobe. Living in a puritan age of cinema may make such scenes stick out as exploitation even more than they normally would, however here the nudity isn’t portrayed in an overtly sexual way.

In fact when romance comes Griffiths’ way in the form of a lonesome gunslinger, their interactions are handled with an innocent charm thanks to Mitsutake’s script, despite the skin on display. If anything the script is both Lion Girl’s biggest strength as well as biggest weakness. Like most of Mitsutake’s work there’s an underlying social commentary, touching on everything from wearing face masks to Japan’s culture of overworking (the amusing slogan of the ShogunTube news broadcast is “Don’t live long, die while working!”), which here are delivered with a sledgehammer level of unsubtlety. However it’s undeniably intentional in much the same way Paul Verhoeven uses a similar approach, which makes the deadpan delivery hit the intended comedic notes (at one point Griffiths finds peace with herself, reflecting that “No matter where you go, there you are.”), and throughout much of Lion Girl it’s difficult not to smile.

On the flip side though the runtime could have done with a little trimming. A few scenes find themselves drowning in exposition, not least the narration dump that plays after the opening credits to bring us up to speed. Even an extended flashback sequence that sees Griffiths break the fourth wall at 45 minutes to tell us “that’s a story for another time” (hinting at a possible sequel?), implying that the flashback is wrapping up, ends up continuing for considerably longer. Similarly, after being told that Lion Girl has trained in everything from karate to judo to ninjitsu, it’s somewhat of a let-down that beyond the (admittedly striking) poses, there’s a distinct lack of fight action. This is despite the presence of Mitsutake regulars like Danish martial artist David Sakurai (One Ranger, The Doorman) and former WWE wrestler Katarina Leigh Waters (Redcon-1, Killing Joan), who we saw deliver the goods in Karate Kill.

Despite these issues, Lion Girl never takes too long to get back to its role of entertaining, and with powers like “breast flame”, “psycho freeze”, and “fire vomit” it’s not difficult to see why. Throw in a Nick Fury lookalike playing Griffiths’ father (the Samuel L. Jackson version, not David Hasselhoff), and a big hair, black leather clad femme fatale who looks like she literally stepped off the screen from a 90’s V-cinema joint, and anyone who’s a fan of Mitsutake’s work will likely find plenty to enjoy in his latest. If anything, the half female half male man-anoroc is worth the price of admission alone, trust me on that one.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 6.5/10

The post Lion Girl (2023) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Maniac Driver” Theatrical Poster

Director: Kurando Mitsutake
Cast: Tomoki Kimura, Iori Kogawa, Yohta Kawase, Ayumi Kimito, Keisaku Kimura, Ai Sayama
Running Time: 75 min.

By Paul Bramhall 

As a director Kurando Mitsutake has proven to be a talent whose work consistently defies expectations.  Not entirely dissimilar to Quentin Tarantino, his movies feel steeped in the influence of 70’s cinema, littered with homages and narratives that feel new yet familiar at the same time. The biggest difference between Tarantino and Mitsutake though, is that the latter’s productions are distilled through a lens of pure exploitation, topped off with a distinctly Japanese twist. Comparatively Mitsutake’s modest budgets may pale when placed next to Tarantino’s Hollywood clout, but what can’t be denied is he’s created some of the most entertaining slices of gonzo cinema over the last decade. From the self-starring Samurai Avenger: The Blind Wolf, to the madness of Gun Woman, and most recently the self-explanatory Karate Kill. 

When I interviewed Mitsutake in 2017 and asked what he thought his next feature would be, he replied he thought it’d “be either my first full-on horror movie, or a hardboiled actioner.” He didn’t let on, but at the time he was already in talks to direct a couple of big budget Japanese productions that would have put him on the mainstream radar, one (in his own words from an interview in 2021) a “hard-boiled Film Noir”, and the other an action flick. Ultimately though both would get stuck in development hell, and after 4 years, in 2020 he decided to let them go. Eager to get back into the director’s chair, the offer to direct a Pink Eiga production may have seemed like a world away from the budgets he’d hoped to be working with, but after the company behind it agreed he could make it a horror, he came onboard and Maniac Driver was born.

So his wish to make a horror may have come true, although ironically even this wasn’t the end of his woes. Once the production company backing Maniac Driver realised that Mitsutake’s script had subtly political undertones incorporated into it, they also backed out, which left the producer to cough up whatever funds they could to ensure the cameras at least got to roll. Thankfully roll they did, and with a cast of AV (adult video) actresses already locked in, the production was put together over just 4 and a half days of shooting (the last of which went on for more than 50 hours – which may explain where the half came from!).  

While such conditions may hardly be ideal for filmmaking, there’s almost a guilty sense of relief as a fan of Mitsutake’s work that he hasn’t gone mainstream yet, although I certainly wouldn’t be one to begrudge him doing so. Being part of the mainstream film industry, especially for a director like Mitsutake and especially for a film industry like Japan, would inevitably result in a dilution of everything that made his style so distinctive in the first place. You only need to look at a director who followed a similar path like Miike Takashi – most fans would invariably choose to watch one of his V-Cinema entries like Visitor Q, over one of his big budget productions like Shield of Straw, myself included.

So it is we have what’s proudly declared as ‘A Japanese Giallo’, a genre that’s rarely visited outside of its Italian roots, with perhaps the last time a Japanese production could legitimately wear the title being 1988’s Door. The plot involves a meek taxi driver who finds himself overcome with murderous urges whenever a beautiful woman gets into his cab, the trauma of seeing his own wife brutally murdered by a masked killer driving him to exact revenge on society by making someone else suffer the same way. Featuring an opening credits sequences that plays over a woman showering who gradually starts to pleasure herself, it should give audiences a taste of what to expect. But just in case there’s any lingering doubt, the credits wrap when the Maniac Driver himself turns up decked out in a black motorcycle helmet and leather jacket, and proceeds to drive a knife through her breast in gratuitous close-up.

I know what you’re thinking – can you really call a movie a giallo when we know who the killer is from the first scene? I’m going to say yes, as the influences of Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci cast a long shadow over Maniac Driver’s aesthetic, with scenes bathed in garishly bright light, and the camera capturing death scenes with an admiring gaze. The murder in the opening scene clearly takes its cue from Fulci’s The New York Ripper, and the first-person viewpoint of the black gloved killer brandishing a knife as they stalk their prey feels like pure Argento. Mitsutake doesn’t just look to the Italian masters for inspiration though, with the grittiness of American cinema in the 70’s and early 80’s also permeating through, with the likes of William Lustig’s Maniac and, most blatantly, Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver being points of reference. We even get the Japanese giallo equivalent of De Niro’s classic “you talkin’ to me?” scene.

Clocking in at a lean 75 minutes, Maniac Driver as expected has precisely zero fat on the bone. The plot amounts to the one line I mentioned in a previous paragraph, with the driver of the title played with a gleeful relish by Tomoki Kimura (The Limit of Sleeping Beauty, and Mitsutake’s latest movie Lion-Girl). Spending his time either contemplating killing himself or murdering his female passengers (and then killing himself), he’s understandably a little edgy to be around. The only part worth elaborating on is the infatuation he develops with one of his passengers who bears a resemblance to his wife, played by AV actress Iori Kogawa (The Game of Jou-Ou, and the Korean production Summer with Mica). Kogawa becomes Kimura’s main target later on, however when it turns out he may not be the only one with ill intentions towards her, events transpire that it may actually offer him a chance at redemption.

There’s something about the humble taxi that seems to make it the perfect plot device for portraying characters with a troubled psyche, and Kimura portrays the role as a kind of mix between Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver and Anthony Wong in Taxi Hunter. I daresay they’d make an ideal triple bill.  Much like in Scorsese’s classic, we view almost the entirety of Maniac Driver from the perspective of Kimura, and similarly there’s a question around how much of what we’re seeing is reality, and how much a delusion that’s a result of his constant sake swilling and pill popping. Whereas Travis Bickle’s delusions may have revolved around violence, with a handful of AV actresses onboard, most of Kimura’s involve sex. Lots of sex, with Maniac Driver unashamedly embracing its Pink Eiga origins, meaning scenes of nudity, slow motion bouncing, Flower and Snake-esque bondage, and gratuitous groping are never far away.

That’s not a bad thing, but considering we’re living in a Puritan age of cinema in the western hemisphere, it’s perhaps worth pointing out that this is not the movie to watch for strong and empowered female characters. At the same time, Mitsutake treads the right side of the line and never descends into misogyny, with Kimura ultimately cutting somewhat of an intentionally pathetic character, only coming to life once he puts on his motorcycle helmet and leathers to become a manically cackling killer. Had the runtime been any longer there would perhaps be deeper themes and underlying messages to explore, however as it is the punchy 75 minutes results in a kind of livewire energy that’s maintained from start to finish. The trade-off may be that there’s never really a sense of tension built up during the actual giallo scenes, but the pacing and energy compensate in such a way that it never becomes a detriment.

With a soundtrack that interchanges between pulsating Goblin-esque synthesisers and power metal courtesy of Japan band Aiming High’s Yasuhiro Kawaguchi, a joyous amount of fake blood that’s used liberally, and a healthy dose of sex, Maniac Driver feels like a shot in the arm of exploitation adrenaline. Frame all of these elements through a giallo infused lens, and once more Mitsutake proves he’s one of the most distinctive directors working in Japan today, proving that time and budget constraints are no match for creativity and a willingness to push the boundaries.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 7/10 

The post Maniac Driver (2020) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Bad City” Theatrical Poster

Director: Kensuke Sonomura
Cast: Hitoshi Ozawa, Tak Sakaguchi, Masanori Mimoto, Rino Katase, Lily Franky, Katsuya, Akane Sakanoue, Yoshiyuki Yamaguchi, Yasukaze Motomiya
Running Time: 118 min. 

By Paul Bramhall 

On paper Bad City is one of those movies that has all the right ingredients to cook up the perfect yakuza action flick. The sophomore feature from stuntman and action choreographer turned director Kensuke Sonomura following 2019’s Hydra, just like with his debut here he also takes on the role of action director. V-Cinema legend Hitoshi Ozawa (Score, Spare) is on leading man, producer, and writing duty, very much making it somewhat of a passion project for the now suitably grizzled 60-year-old star. We get Tak Sakaguchi (once more billed as Tak ∴, as he was in his ‘final’ action movie Re:Born from 2016) playing a silent knife wielding killer, and Sonomura re-teams with Hydra leading man and Japan’s leading action talent (and in many ways the successor to Sakaguchi) Masanori Mimoto (Baby Assassins, Enter the Fat Dragon) to show off his moves.

From the start it’s clear Bad City is much grander in scope than Sonomura’s debut in the director’s chair. Whereas Hydra was very much a self-contained story with a limited cast of characters and a runtime of less than 80 minutes, Bad City ramps things up in every aspect, creating a sprawling tale of corruption and gangsters involving a plethora of characters which unfolds across 2 hours. The plot sees Ozawa as a former detective who’s been imprisoned on suspicion of murdering the son of a powerful Korean gang boss, played by Rino Katase (of the popular Yakuza Ladies series from the 80’s and 90’s). However there’s more to the situation than meets the eye, with Katase unaware there may be treachery within her own ranks.

When the head of a conglomerate with links to the underworld (played by Lily Franky – Yakuza Apocalypse, As the Gods Will) announces he’s running for mayor, he partners with one of Katase’s underlings to green light a residential area for redevelopment into a casino resort, a plan that Katase’s son was opposed to. Knowing Ozawa was heavily involving in bringing down the Korean gang before, an ambitious prosecutor organises for him to be released on temporary parole, partnering him with a trio from the violent crimes unit – played by Katsuya (Midnight Swan, The Blood of Wolves), his partner played by Masanori Mimoto, and as with so many of these movies, the obligatory female newbie, played by Akane Sakanoue (Your Eyes Tell, Back Street Girls: Gokudols).

While these tales of gangster backstabbing, usually both literally and metaphorically, were once a staple of Japanese cinema, from their heyday in the 70’s through to their V-Cinema rebirth in the 80’s and 90’s, there’s little doubt that it’s been Korea which has picked up the slack in the 21^st century. It’s worth mentioning because it’s more recent Korean productions that feel like an influence on Bad City more so than Japan’s V-cinema era. The plot plays out like a mix of 2017’s Asura: City of Madness and 2021’s Paid in Blood, with Ozawa’s relentless cop coming across like a grittier, less humorous version of Ma Dong-seok’s one-man wrecking ball from The Roundup franchise (or as one character puts it, he’s “foul mouthed, violent, and has no sense of propriety”). That’s not necessarily a bad thing, and few would disagree that any yakuza flick which opens with a bathhouse slaughter isn’t off to a strong start.

The initial momentum though isn’t one that Sonomura is able to maintain for the duration of the significant runtime, an issue mainly derived from the fact there’s simply too many characters in the mix. Ozawa makes for an effective anchor, and whenever he’s onscreen his gravelly voiced presence and weathered features serve to propel the plot forward. The issue is there’s several scenes that don’t involve him, as we spend time with everyone from the violent crimes unit trio, the Korean mafia, a rival yakuza gang, the mayor, and the prosecutors who are trying to orchestrate everything behind the scenes. In the hands of a stronger director the various factions could probably have been juggled to effectively crank up the tension, however Sonomura isn’t quite there yet, and the result is a stop-start feel to the pacing.

Thankfully Sonomura’s far more competent when it comes to the action side of things, and while we know the combination of him and Mimoto results in magic, Bad City marks the first time for him to collaborate with Tak Sakaguchi in the capacity of choreographer and performer since 2011’s Deadball. Sakaguchi’s silent knife wielding assassin is arguably a scene stealer, and there’s a legitimate argument to be made that he’s playing the same Reborn Ghost character that he portrayed in 2016’s Re:Born. Once more he’s able to dodge bullets, and there’s no doubt that the fighting style utilized is the same Zero Range Combat System. Thankfully the opportunity isn’t wasted for a Mimoto versus Takaguchi showdown, with a brief mid-runtime skirmish giving way to a 2 versus 1 showdown during the finale, as Mimoto teams up with Sakanoue to take him down once and for all.

Incorporated as part of a broader action sequence that encompasses the best part of 20 minutes (and really should have been the finale, however the narrative somewhat shoots itself in the foot by continuing for another 15 mins once it wraps), it’s a sequence which serves as a microcosm of Bad City as a whole. The strength of Sonomura’s choreography style for me has always been the way he’s able to incorporate little moments of hesitancy between 2 opponents that seem perfectly natural, and really serves to add a heightened sense of realism to the fights he constructs. They’re moments that as a viewer make you physically tense up, making you feel like you’re part of the fight yourself, however such moments require the extended takes and sole focus on the scene so as not to dilute any of the tension, elements that we’ve become used to from Sonomura.

Here he tries something different, first with a massive group brawl which sees Ozawa and his crew take on a small army of attackers, and it doesn’t quite hit the mark. The use of a large open space seems to work against the more intricate choreography Sonomura is known for, and with Sakanoue in particular the moves still feel rehearsed, a few beats off from looking like they have a natural flow. The smaller fights the sequence segues into fare far better, with Ozawa getting tangled up in a desperate stairwell brawl, and eventually facing off one on one against Yoshiyuki Yamaguchi (Bushido Man, Tokyo Tribe). Ozawa executes the choreography admirably considering his age, creating the best fight of the movie, however the fact that each individual action scene is intercut with the others (including, most criminally, cutaways to a non-action scene) unfortunately act as a distraction to the flow of the fights rather than complimenting them.

There’s a sense of if a little more time had been taken Bad City would be up there with Hydra, which while much smaller in scale, clearly worked to its advantage when it came to crafting the action sequences. Here Sonomura has understandably looked to scale things up, and by doing so has unfortunately proven the old adage that bigger isn’t always better. However his ambition is admirable, and as a sophomore feature Bad City is far from being a bad movie.

Strip it down by 30 minutes so we get more of Ozawa front and centre, lose some of the more superfluous characters altogether, and give us a face off between Mimoto and Sakaguchi without interruptions, Bad City would be a lean little gangster flick with some of the best action this side of the 2020’s. As it is, we get an enjoyable attempt at a yakuza epic that doesn’t quite match its ambitions, but still delivers plenty of gravelly voiced machismo and punches to the face.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 6/10

The post Bad City (2022) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

The Sound of Summer | Blu-ray (Unearthed Films)

Director: Guy
Cast: Kaori Hoshino, Shinya Hankawa, Keita Kusaka, Kiyomi Kametani, Kuromi Kirishima
Running Time: 75 min.

By Henry McKeand

The Sound of Summer, the first full length effort from the Japan-based, British-born director known as “Guy,” opens with a transformation. A cicada sheds its skin in unsettling close-up; it’s akin to seeing an alien parasite burst forth from a suffering host. Against a black background, it looks uncanny, almost computer generated, and the scene is soundtracked by the miniature cacophony of buzzing insects. It’s a disorienting, eerie beginning that makes you feel as if the bug could break through the screen itself and fly out at you.

Immediately after this striking visual, a goofy rock song kicks in. This is followed by a low-budget montage of someone using a net to catch unthreatening cicadas in broad daylight as the opening credits roll. This looks more like a high school video project than a vessel for the near-cosmic horror of the opening metamorphosis. 

The tonal polarity between these two sequences defines The Sound of Summer, which is torn between high-minded dread and kitschy fun. These competing perspectives don’t always complement each other. Nevertheless, it’s an audacious feature debut for Guy, who has the straight-from-a-nightmare imagination of the best horror directors even when his execution is muddled. 

The inspired concept is loaded with perverse potential. The titular “sound of summer” refers to the ambient chirps and whirs of the cicadas that (maybe literally?) get under the skin of the protagonist: a young café worker played by newcomer Kaori Hoshino. Her simple life is interrupted when she meets an odd man (Shinya Hankawa) who comes into her café with a face mask and containers full of writhing insects. Without ever speaking to him, she gives him the nickname “Cicada Man” and begins to suspect that his intentions are sinister. She gradually becomes convinced that his small creatures have infected her body, kicking off a strange journey into paranoia and self-harm. 

It’s the best kind of scary movie setup, taking something seemingly harmless that everyone has experienced (the warm season courtship cries of cicadas) and turning it into a source of terror. Those noises are everywhere, which makes early scenes of mundane life suspenseful. Sadly, many early scenes work as harmless filler, establishing a “normal” life that’s too mundane to care about. The music in this act one stretch, which veers into sounding like a stock music soundtrack, doesn’t help things. 

But even when the characters go about their workdays in a digital daytime glow, there’s the threat that we’ll be suddenly taken back to that dreamlike visual of the sinister, molting cicada. Here, the questions are scarier than the answers. Why is there so much focus on these bugs? What are they capable of? When the unpleasantries escalate and the mystery fades, so does the tension. 

Luckily, Guy mostly avoids the played-out “is it all a delusion?” safety net that so many independent psychological horror indies rely on. No, this is a film dedicated to actually showing you what you should be afraid of in unambiguous detail, which makes it more interesting than the majority of Rosemary’s Baby-lites that have come out in recent years. For better or worse, most of the meager budget has clearly gone to gooey, z-movie special effects that will be catnip for people who seek out obscure body-horror flicks. 

The turning point comes midway through the film when Hoshino, convinced that there are cicadas inside of her, decides that she’s going to cut them out. What follows is a red-food-syrup-splattered gorefest; Cabin Fever by way of Cronenberg shooting on an iPhone. The squishy effects are as hilarious as they are disgusting. The heightened bloodiness and behind-the-scenes inventiveness are charming, but they distract from what could have been mind-numbingly disturbing if handled with more seriousness.

This boils down to a matter of taste. Do you like your horror with a film nerd grin or a hardened scowl? The playfulness is appealing while also undermining later scenes that reach for a higher sense of human fear. By the end, it’s more of a D.I.Y. FX showcase than a fleshed-out story. 

If you love this sort of thing, you already know. The imagery is scary, and rubber horror prosthetics are always fun, but it’s hard not to think of what could be if Guy fully and earnestly commits to his macabre visions in the future. For the time being, The Sound of Summer is an interesting glimpse into an exciting filmmaker to watch in the coming years.

Henry McKeand’s Rating: 5.5/10

The post Sound of Summer, The (2022) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Hell Dogs” Theatrical Poster

Director: Masato Harada
Cast: Junichi Okada, Kentaro Sakaguchi, Mayu Matsuoka, Miyavi, Kazuki Kitamura, Shinobu Otake, Satoshi Kanada, Mai Kiryu, Arisa Nakajima, Kyoko
Running Time: 138 min.

By Henry McKeand

What happened to the good old-fashioned Yakuza flick?  Japanese underworld tales were a dime a dozen pre-Y2K, but they’ve started to fade into the background along with gangster films the world over. Maybe meat-and-potatoes crime stories just don’t stand a chance in cineplexes packed with superhero epics and would-be franchise starters that cost more than $200 million to make. 

Yakuza characters themselves certainly haven’t faded in popularity. They’ve popped up in some of the biggest AAA releases of the past five years (Deadpool 2, Bullet Train, and John Wick 4) as well as countless mid-budget actioners, but genuine, no-frills movies solely about the Yakuza are hard to come by. Kitano and Miike have continued to explore their criminal sides, and Kazuya Shiraishi’s Wolves films were refreshing throwbacks, but these are exceptions to the rule. Even 2021’s Yakuza-centric A Family functioned more as a social issue melodrama than a real thriller. 

This is why last year’s Hell Dogs seemed so exciting. Directed by Masato Harada (Kamikaze Taxi and Bounce Ko Gals) and based on a manga by Akio Fukamachi, it’s the kind of unpretentious potboiler that we don’t get much of anymore. Rather than devolving into pastiche or commenting on its subject matter, it serves up a heaping platter of bloody pulp that delivers on the promise of its ominous tagline: “Pure. Violence.”

Harada’s approach to the genre may be straightforward, but the narrative is anything but. Here’s the short version of its labyrinthine setup: Goro (Junichi Okada) was a rookie cop whose life was upended when vicious robbers murdered a young woman he was starting to fall in love with. After enacting vengeance upon the men, he is recruited by a calculating police chief (Yoshi Sakô) who persuades him to go undercover in the Toshokai crime syndicate headed by the mysterious Toake (MIYAVI). To do so, Goro changes his name to “Tak” and befriends a volatile up-and-comer named Muro (Kentaro Sakaguchi).

This is only scratching the surface of what turns out to be a needlessly complicated plot. Opening scenes unload a huge amount of backstory, as characters throw out so many names and motivations that it’s easy to lose track. The fascinating relationship between Tak and Muro is ostensibly the emotional core, but this main thread is often sidelined in order to make room for scattershot detours. Love triangles and young romances and inner-family feuds and murderous cult backstories all add up to…well, not as much as you’d think. 

It probably doesn’t help that Tak himself is mostly a cipher. The exact goals of his mission are not entirely clear. Despite being undercover, he witnesses killing and kills people himself constantly. Ever stranger, his murders don’t seem to have much of an effect on him. In this way, Hell Dogs separates itself from obvious forebearers like Infernal Affairs and New World. Here, there are no suspenseful pat-downs or wiretapped meetings or conversations about not knowing the difference between cop and criminal anymore. In Harada’s script, this difference is essentially non-existent. Tak’s chief is fine with his frequent murders, and no one seems to be concerned about actually arresting anyone. 

That’s not necessarily a criticism. Nope: Hell Dogs is pure hardboiled ennui, more focused on stylish tough guy melancholy than any realistic police work. Harada has a knack at making killers and scumbags almost instantly iconic, and Junichi Okada as Tak is instrumental in selling this sense of gangster cool. Okada, who also explored the Yakuza world in the recent Fable romps, has the prickly swagger and hangdog weariness of greats like Lee Marvin or Joe Shishido. He uses his short stature to create a larger-than-life character who’s paradoxically most comfortable blending into the background. 

Playing off of him is Sakaguchi’s unstable Muro. There’s a quiet closeness between the two men that is never fully explored, but it’s not a stretch to say that there’s a homoerotic undercurrent to their scenes together. In fact, an unexpected sensuality infects many scenes that may have otherwise been sterile. These moments of heightened passion combined with the breakdown of traditional police/outlaw morality make this a surprisingly effective Heroic Bloodshed story by the time the bullets really start flying in the final act.

And fly, they do. It’s not a straight up action movie, per se, but the violence is kinetic and frequent. There’s the prerequisite John Wick-esque shootout in the second half (the CGI blood is actually pretty good!), but the combat is at its best when characters are locked into down-and-dirty street fights that still leave room for balletic, emotional choreography. 

But more than anything, this is a vessel for what only gangster films can provide: feudal murderers walking around in nice suits and threatening each other. It may sound superficial, but crime diehards know just how thrilling and nuanced this tried-and-true formula can be. Yes, the script could have been retooled to focus on the aching chemistry of the central characters instead of the jumbled mafia specifics, but Hell Dogs transcends its flaws and provides a bona fide old-school shot of adrenaline.

Henry McKeand’s Rating: 7.5/10

The post Hell Dogs (2022) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“A Family” Theatrical Poster

AKA: Yakuza and the Family
Director: Michihito Fujii
Cast: Go Ayano, Hiroshi Tachi, Machiko Ono, Yukiya Kitamura, Hayato Ichihara, Hayato Isomura, Shun Sugata, Suon Kan, Ryutaro Ninomiya, Taro Suruga
Running Time: 135 min.

By Henry McKeand

“Lately, I’m getting the feeling that I came in at the end. The best is over.”

It’s been nearly twenty-five years since Tony Soprano, perhaps America’s last real mafia icon, said these words in the pilot episode of The Sopranos. For at least three decades, crime films (or at least their protagonists) have bemoaned the fact that being a mobster isn’t what it used to be, but that hasn’t done anything to control audiences’ appetite for underworld stories. This puts crime filmmakers in a tough position: they can either look back to the mid-20^th-century, when organized crime was at the height of its powers, or try to tell a topical crime story that reckons with the decline of traditional gangster subcultures.

Japan cinema has been dealing with this dilemma for years. Cultural changes and legal crackdowns have led to decreasing numbers of Japanese Yakuza, who have been staples of cinematic gangsterdom since the 70s. Some films, such as Takeshi Kitano’s Outrage trilogy, have tackled this steady fall. Sure, Kitano served up the requisite bloodshed and backstabbing, but his Yakuza characters, with their severed pinkies and feudal mindsets, seemed out of place in the modern world, their ceaseless violence the death throes of a shrinking caste. 

If Kitano was subtly commenting on these changes, Michihito Fujii faces them head-on with A Family, his underseen 2020 film about Yakuza clashing with a new Japan that wants nothing to do with them. It presents a world where Yakuza are rendered weak and desperate in the 21^st century, and the film’s most devastating scenes center on the mental anguish that comes when someone’s way of life disappears.

At over two hours, it tells an epic story spanning twenty years in a Yakuza family. A young man named Kenji (Go Ayano) lives an aimless life of petty crime until he meets Shibasaki (Hiroshi Tachi), a Yakuza boss with an old-school moral code. As he goes deeper into the Yakuza lifestyle, Kenji begins to look at Shibasaki as a father figure. Things are good for a while, especially when he forms a connection with a student and part-time hostess named Yukiko (Machiko Ono), but dangerous rivals and a rapidly changing world threaten to tear everything apart. 

The first hour tells a story you’ve seen before. Kenji rises through the ranks, finds purpose in his criminal family, and meets a woman who shows him what a “normal” life could be. This more formulaic half won’t be a problem for anyone jonesing for a good modern Yakuza drama. It’s well-shot and confidently directed, and the “period piece” segments, taking place in 1999 and 2005, are stylish and effective without relying on nostalgic imagery. The performances are all fantastic, with Hiroshi Tachi’s turn as the Yakuza patriarch especially impressive. Most importantly, the gangster politics are interesting, and everything comes to a satisfying mid-point showdown.

The film deviates from genre expectations when the plot jumps forward to 2019. With time, the tight-knit brotherhood of Yakuza has become a glorified street gang. To make ends meet, they resort to petty schemes and risky narcotics deals. There are no grand shootouts or standoffs now, and there’s a mournful quality to every scene. Genre fans may be disappointed at the lack of fireworks, but this is where Fujii mines the film’s true pathos. 

For better or worse, A Family has an almost unprecedented focus on the sad realities of modern Yakuza life. It’s especially interested in what it means to be ex-Yakuza in an unaccepting society. In the film’s world, finding jobs and supporting a family with the stigma of being a former Yakuza is a painful and often humiliating experience. Because of this, some characters end up clinging onto their Yakuza identities even as it destroys them. To them, it’s the only way that they can be treated with respect or humanity. 

It’s an interesting subject to explore, but Fujii comes dangerously close to steering into “message movie” territory. Scene after scene, characters cry and mourn the lives they once knew as the soundtrack swells. It begins to feel a little too emotionally manipulative, even in undeniably powerful scenes of aging Yakuza longing for acceptance.

In the world of A Family, the Yakuza are underdogs merely trying to hold onto centuries-old values of brotherhood and honor, and the main characters are shown mostly well-intentioned. Tachi’s gentle crime boss character is treated by both the characters and the script as a kind old man who simply wants the best for his family. 

In some ways, this is a strongpoint of the film. From Fukasaku to Miike, many classic Japanese crime films have pointed out moral rot and hypocrisy in the would-be-Samurai codes of the Yakuza, but Fujii more or less takes his characters at face value. The best crime stories get you to empathize with its outlaws, and simple moral condemnation is rarely interesting. Still, it’s hard not to wonder what the film could be if it did more to acknowledge that even the halcyon days of the Yakuza were full of violence and exploitation. This could have added moral nuance to characters that here read as pitiful victims of changing times. 

Even with its sometimes overly-sentimental view of its gangster protagonists, A Family presents a fresh look its subject matter. Fujii proves in early scenes that he can deliver down-and-dirty crime thrills, but the eventual shift to broader themes of forgiveness and reformation is refreshing and ultimately worthwhile. 

Henry McKeand’s Rating: 7/10

The post A Family (2020) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“War of the God Monsters” Poster

AKA: The Flying Monster
Director: Kim Jung-yong
Cast: Kim Ki-ju, Nam Hye-gyeong, Kim Da-hye, Moon Tae-Seon, Kim Uk, Jang Cheol
Running Time: 85 min. 

By Paul Bramhall

Korean cinema was in a strange place during the mid-80’s. After military strongman Chun Doo-hwan essentially elected himself as the country’s president in September 1980 following months of martial law and the infamous Gwangju Massacre in May, filmmakers needed to be extra cautious not to be seen as criticising Doo-hwan’s junta-like rule. To try and take peoples mind off the grim direction that Korean politics seemed to be sending the country towards, it was often cited that Doo-hwan introduced a ‘Three S’s’ policy – representing sex, screen, and sport – to keep peoples minds occupied. The policy was perhaps most ironic for the film industry, as while stories about social problems, real life-events, and any political content was strictly banned, restrictions around showing nudity were actually relaxed.

This led to the erotic cinema boom of the 80’s, and in 1985 the licensing system was changed to a registration one, also allowing for many smaller independent production companies to start making movies. This background is worth detailing, since it was 1985 that director Kim Jung-yong decided to release The Flying Monster onto the world, or as it was to be released in the west, War of the God Monsters. Korean kaiju flicks aren’t exactly common, especially one’s made in the 1980’s, however they’re also not unheard of. In 1967 director Kim Ki-duk made Yongary, Monster from the Deep (which would be remade by Shum Hyung-rae in 1999), and anyone who’s seen the 1976 Korea-U.S. co-production A*P*E isn’t likely to forget it.

As a director Jung-yong specialised almost exclusively in making local kung-fu flicks, as well as working as an assistant director on Korea shot Hong Kong productions such as John Woo’s Hand of Death and Peng Chang-Kuei’s Tiger of Northland. After working with the likes of Casanova Wong (Rivals of the Silver Fox) and Dragon Lee (The 18 Amazones) in the 70’s, it would be the 80’s where Jung-yong would cross paths with the man who’d seemingly become his muse – Elton Chong. Yes, if you’ve ever wondered who is responsible for creating some of the most grating slices of Korean kung-fu, Jung-yong is that guy. He’d helm practically every production Chong starred in, from early 80’s efforts like The Snake Strikes Back and Invincible Obsessed Fighter, through to attempting to turn him into a sex symbol in the latter half of the decade with titles like The Double Trumpets in the Nation and Double Bed Commotion.

In War of the God Monsters Chong is nowhere to be found, although watching him unleash his kicks against kaiju monsters is an admittedly appealing proposition. Instead, we get kung-fu luminary Kim Ki-ju (Golden Dragon, Silver Snake, Dragon, The Young Master), here playing it straight as a doctor convinced that dinosaurs are coming back to life. Watching War of the God Monsters in 2023, Ki-ju’s theories that blame climate change (even if it’s not referred to using those exact words) sound more convincing than they likely did at the time of its release. A journalist played by Nam Hye-gyeong (who’d only appear in 3 other movies – the kung-fu flicks The Gate of Flying Tiger and Divine Power and Magic Martial Arts, and the erotic drama Open Mouthed Pomegranate) wants to cover Ki-ju’s theory, but since it was ridiculed he’s gone into hiding with his daughter, played by Kim Da-hye (Whale Hunting 2, Korean Boy).

Either thanks to, or in spite of, her awesome perm and detective skills, Hye-gyeong tracks down Ki-ju to his remote home up in the hills, and soon installs herself as the new housekeeper the local hospital have sent, disguising herself by placing a mole above her lip. Yep, a note to the Clark Kent’s out there, carrying around a handy fake mole in your pocket could be much easier than always having to find a phone box. But why does Hye-gyeong carry around a fake mole? Never mind, that’s not what War of the God Monsters wants you to be concerned about! Instead, we have to endure watching Hye-gyeong and Da-hye bond together through dancing lessons and doll hair brushing, while Ki-ju staggers around some undisclosed foliage and rocks with nothing but a hammer (it’s Korea after all) trying to find proof that dinosaurs have come back. 

Basic details that are usually considered important to the language of cinema don’t exist in War of the God Monsters. Where exactly is Ki-ju exploring, and why does he have sudden outbursts that see him fall to his knees yelling “Why does everyone think I’m crazy!?” while throwing the local fauna everywhere!? At one point he literally finds a dinosaur skull laying on a beach, which is fair enough if we’re to believe he’s in some far-flung remote location, but just a few minutes later he’s talking to a local fisherman who’s complaining about how all the fish have disappeared. Surprisingly though, a lack of cohesiveness isn’t Jung-yong’s biggest issue as a director. That comes in the form of the fact he had zero budget for kaiju effects, effectively rendering his production dead in the water before it began.

Like the thawed-out dinosaurs that Ki-ju’s character speaks of, having no budget for the very spectacle your movie promises wasn’t enough to stand in the way of the director’s resourcefulness. War of the God Monsters was made at the same time as Hong Kong’s Godfrey Ho would begin to pioneer the cut ‘n’ paste style of movie making. In the case of Ho, his process involved filming new ninja footage with the local gweilo population (and Richard Harrison), and then inserting it into little known Taiwanese, Korean, and Thai movies he’d bought the international distribution rights to. Throw in some re-dubbing and debatable editing techniques, and the result was a new movie that could be marketed to appeal to the ninja craze of the time, made with minimal time and effort. Jung-yong’s approach was somewhat similar, only his was to re-use footage from Japanese tokusatsu shows and Taiwan fantasy flicks.

It’s impossible to know whether Jung-yong and Ho’s techniques influenced the other, however while Ho could at least claim to own the distribution rights to the movies he butchered, it’s more than likely that Jung-yong took a more liberal approach with the footage he used. Monsters from 3 series’ of Ultraman (Ultraman, Return of Ultraman, and Ultraman Ace) make appearances, as well as the short-lived Fireman series from 1973, and the 1971 Taiwan production The Founding of Ming Dynasty. The fact that the monster effects from these productions were already over 10 years old by the time War of the God Monsters hit the screens was presumably not a big deal, with perhaps the choice to use such old material being intentional so as to draw less attention to itself.

The final third essentially consists of a monster mega mix with barely a line of dialogue spoken, as a plethora of monster scenes that would have played out much further apart (or even more likely, in completely different episodes) are thrown together with reckless abandon. There’s a giant kind of chicken turkey hybrid, an underwater bat type creature, horned Godzilla-esque monstrosities, and a pair of random dragons. Basically, everything except anything that even vaguely resembles a dinosaur. Intermingled with scenes of Korean extras running around in every direction and some horrendous acting (one nameless couple sees the man yelling at his wife that they need to run because a monster is coming, to which she calmly replies “Oh, I need to pack my things, how close is it?” as if it’s just an everyday occurrence), the whole sequence feels like an unapologetically chaotic mess of explosions and rubbery suits.

War of the God Monsters is an undeniably bad movie. It almost feels like director Jung-yong wasn’t interested in helming the slices of erotica that were popular at the time, but at the same time was smart enough to know the kung-fu genre that had been his staple so far was no longer in fashion. This was the result, combining typical Korean genre melodrama tropes (you better believe in the end Da-hye asks Hye-gyeong to be her mother!) with a B-movie plot involving plastic dinosaur bones and re-cycled monster footage from the early 70’s. Still, it’s equally hard to deny that there isn’t an odd charm underlying the brazen lack of budget and fake moles, so as a uniquely Korean kaiju oddity, War of the God Monsters makes for a fascinating snapshot of the era.

 Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 5.5/10

The post War of the God Monsters | aka The Flying Monster (1985) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Sex and Fury” Theatrical Poster

Director: Norifumi Suzuki
Cast: Reiko Ike, Akemi Negishi, Ryoko Ema, Yoko Hori, Naomi Oka, Katsumasa Uchida, Rena Ichinose, Tatsuo Endō, Yōko Mihara, Christina Lindberg
Running Time: 88 min.

By Henry McKeand

While action cinema has long been criticized as pornographic in its depictions of bloodshed and weaponry, the ‘pinky violence’ films released in Japan during the 60s and 70s are early examples of filmmakers pushing that pornographic label past the figurative. Most pink films, classified by high amounts of explicit violence and nudity, remain relatively obscure outside of Japan, but there are some that have gained small cult followings in the West. 

One such film is Norifumi Suzuki’s Sex and Fury, which owes some of its lasting appeal to its purported influence on Kill Bill. There are certainly visuals and themes that will remind modern audiences of Tarantino’s epic, but Sex and Fury is a scuzzier affair than most of Kill Bill’s other Eastern influences. It’s a down-and-dirty exploitation film that also happens to be beautifully shot, and part of the appeal is Suzuki’s ability to find moments of sublimity in all of the sleaze. In this sense, it’s not hard to see why Suzuki’s work would have an effect on a wave of later filmmakers, Tarantino included, who went further in combining grindhouse subject matter with arthouse sensibilities. 

The film kicks off with the cold-hearted slaying of a detective in front of his horrified daughter, Ocho. Jumping forward in time, the rest of the plot centers around Ocho (played as an adult by pink film staple Reiko Ike) as she searches for vengeance using her skills as a swordfighter and gambler. The seemingly simple premise is complicated by a handful of B-stories introduced early on, the most notable of which being the star-crossed romance between a tormented British spy (played by the Queen of Sleaze herself, Christina Lindberg) and a righteous Japanese rebel (Masataka Naruse). The script is loaded with infidelity and political corruption and promises made to dying men, but these detours mostly serve to pile on the requisite nudity and melodrama. 

The film is at its strongest when it focuses on Ocho’s obsessive quest to avenge her father. Ike has a magnetic screen presence, and she uses her strong physicality and emotional range to turn Ocho into a character as savage as she is heroic. 

This is best exemplified in what is perhaps the film’s most memorable scene: a chaotic sword battle in which a naked Ocho takes on a horde of gangsters. Suzuki could have fallen back on the lurid appeal of a naked woman slicing through men with a katana, but there’s an intentionality to the filmmaking that elevates the set piece. As time slows down and Ichiro Araki’s funk score builds, the camera captures the flurry of chaotic motion and blood so calmly that the scene starts to feel like a fun, hypnotic dream. Through Suzuki’s direction, sloppy and brutal attacks take on an almost balletic quality. By the time the violence moves outside into an idyllic snowfall, the sequence has become downright beautiful.

Key to this scene, and several others, is Ike’s dedication to material that could have been cheap and ridiculous. Uninterested in traditional vanity, she’s unafraid to play Ocho with a snarling, coil spring intensity. During the naked swordfight, she resembles a cornered animal, leaping and slashing at enemies that she can only overpower through sheer ferocity. She’s desperate yet in control—vulnerable yet fearless. 

The choreography throughout isn’t the most deliberate or complex, and the film seems more interested in the complications that would realistically arise in close quarters struggles. Killers get in each other’s way and bump into walls and charge through crowds with knives and wildly grab for any body part they can get their hands on. Suzuki understands that street level viciousness can be just as thrilling as well-planned scenes of flashy martial arts.

A pink film can’t get by on just violence, and the sex is more frequent, and often more stylized, than the action. The sexual half of the film’s pinky equation runs the gamut from memories of tender lovemaking to scenes of torture and sexual assault. This violence against women should be no surprise to anyone seeking out this kind of 70s genre fare, but the predictability doesn’t make it any less off-putting. Still, its sexual politics are nowhere near as noxious as something like Hanzo the Razor. There isn’t anything romanticized about the film’s many predators, and the script isn’t afraid to show how systemic abuse spreads and permeates through all of its characters. That being said, your enjoyment will vary depending on your ability to stomach these scenes.

Sex and Fury is edgy, well-made grindhouse entertainment that balances its formal experimentation and sense of 70s cool with an engaging and uncompromising revenge story. It’s perfect if you’re in the mood for an authentic exploitation film that manages to feel fresh even now. 

(Plus, a scene full of knife-wielding nuns is the perfect teaser for Suzuki’s nunsploitation cult classic School of the Holy Beast, released just a year later)

Henry McKeand’s Rating: 8/10

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“Haze” Theatrical Poster

Director: Shinya Tsukamoto
Cast: Shinya Tsukamoto, Takahiro Murase, Takahiro Kandaka, Masato Tsujioka, Mao Saito
Running Time: 49 min.

By Henry McKeand

Shinya Tsukamoto’s films have always presented a claustrophobic view of the world. Even in massive and open urban landscapes, Tsukamoto’s characters are trapped by the oppressive man-made structures that surround them. There’s the sense that concrete and steel are capable of closing in at any time, overwhelming and overpowering helpless human bodies.

It’s fitting, then, that Tsukamoto would explore an aggressively literal version of this claustrophobia with 2005’s Haze, which centers on a man trapped in an uncaring concrete maze. Initially screened as one of the digital short films of the 2005 Jeonju International Film Festival in Korea, Haze is Tsukamoto at his most uncompromising.

The plot seems simple at first. A man (played by Tsukamoto himself) wakes up in a cramped, dark space with no real recollection of how he got there. With his back against the floor, his nose is an inch away from a massive concrete ceiling. He can barely turn his head, let alone find his way out. It’s a jarring first scene that expertly captures the despair of the situation. Tsukamoto has long been one of cinema’s most tactile filmmakers, and he gives every harsh slab of cement a gritty texture that’s uncomfortable even to watch. As a performer, he desperately crawls and twists his body, underscoring just how terrifying the situation would be.

What follows is a sequence of dread-inducing, breathe-through-your-nose setpieces. The highlight has Tsukamoto biting down on a stretch of thick pipe in a dangerously narrow hallway. His only way out is to move down the hallway, but he doesn’t have enough room to remove the pipe from between his jaws. The sound of his teeth scraping against the metal is painful, resulting in a scene that feels nightmarish in the truest sense of the word.

Throughout this torment, the man wonders what led to his imprisonment. Was he on the wrong side of a war and taken prisoner? Or is a rich sadist torturing him for amusement? Presented with the unflinching brutality of his situation, the answer seems almost unimportant. Movies are rarely so immediate; because the protagonist can’t see more than a few inches ahead, the film itself is concerned with the here and now. For most of the 49 minute runtime, all that matters are the bumps and spikes and rough edges of the maze. And while it’s a short film, it feels like a comprehensive journey into one man’s personal hell. Anything longer could have been overkill.

Eventually, the man does run into someone else: a determined woman who seems equally confused about their situation. As the two of them talk, the movie becomes more contemplative. The physical torments they experience begin to feel like manifestations of emotional anguish. Even in his most blunt force work, Tsukamoto never explicitly spells out his themes, and Haze’s ambiguity has a haunting and unsettling effect. The final ten minutes are surprisingly human and tender for a film as cruel as this one, proving that Tsukamoto is interested in more than pure torture.

In regards to torture, many have written about Haze as Tsukamoto’s answer to films such as Saw. And while it has a similar industrial nastiness to Saw and the subgenre it inspired, it would be a mistake to view the film as a mere response to contemporary trends. Tsukamoto was exploring the fragility of the human body long before the so-called “torture porn” wave, and Haze’s dirty and cold look is a natural evolution of his earlier work with Tetsuo and Tokyo Fist. Haze does feature a significant level of gore, but the viscera itself is less important than the way it contributes to the protagonist’s dehumanized mindset.

There’s another key distinction between Haze and Saw. Saw’s humanism derives from the idea that the traps and torture rooms are literal and the victims would be able to appreciate normal life more if they were to escape. Haze, on the other hand, offers a more complicated view. Tsukamoto seems to be suggesting that modern life is so brutalizing that the only way to truly escape is to reach a kind of mental peace. The maze is terrifying, but the outside world of skyscrapers and bombs isn’t much better.

Some will appreciate the thoughtful second half, while others will see it as a letdown after the relentless opening. Regardless, the filmmaking itself is astounding. Shot on early digital cameras, Haze is a low-budget and ugly movie dominated by murky dark colors, but every shot is deliberate and thrilling. Tsukamoto uses extreme close-up to create the illusion of scope; the corridors are rarely shown in full, but the claustrophobic, disorienting direction forces the viewer to imagine a maze more horrifying than any big-budget film set. Tsukamoto’s ingenuity and imagination turn a barebones concept into a short film that’s Lovecraftian in its excitement and epic implications.

Henry McKeand’s Rating: 8/10

The post Haze (2005) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Baby Assassins” Theatrical Poster

Director: Yugo Sakamoto
Cast: Akari Takaishi, Saori Izawa, Mone Akitani, Yukina Fukushima, Masanori Mimoto, Atom Mizuishi, Yasukaze Motomiya, Takashi Nishina, Yosuke Ohmizu
Running Time: 95 min.

By Paul Bramhall 

We can blame the John Wick franchise for the action genres current infatuation with assassins for hire. Following a bombardment of assassin flicks in the 2010’s which came after the release of the original John Wick in 2014, now only a couple of years into the 2020’s and there doesn’t seem to be any slowing down. We’ve already had Maggie Q in Protégé, Mary Elizabeth Winstead in Kate, Karen Gillan in Gunpowder Milkshake, and those are just the ones that immediately spring to mind. Even Japan, a country in which the action genre is usually relegated to the low to no budget arena, has thrown its hat into the ring with the likes of 2019’s The Fable and it’s 2021 sequel, The Killer Who Doesn’t Kill, which features a surprising amount of top shelf action.

In 2021 it was also Japan that offered up Baby Assassins, thankfully not a literal title when it comes to either of the ways it could be interpreted as meaning. The fourth full length feature from director Yugo Sakamoto, Baby Assassins further elaborates on what appears to be a kind of assassin’s universe that Sakamoto has created. His previous feature A Janitor also involves a world of assassins, as do his shorts The Legend of the Strongest Hitman: Kunioka and Heaven’s Rush. Here he takes a pair of actresses who play significant supporting roles in A Janitor in the form of Akari Takaishi (Distant Thunder) and stuntwoman Saori Izawa (Re:Born), and propels them into the titular roles that the title alludes to.

Straight off the bat it’s clear that Baby Assassins shares a significant amount of DNA with 2019’s Hydra. Not only in the fact that Hydra’s director Kensuke Sonomura is onboard here as fight choreographer, and its leading man Masanori Mimoto shows up on bad guy duty, but also in its overall tone and approach. Hydra was more of a small-scale slice of life human drama than an all-out action flick, ironically one that also involved assassins, and Baby Assassins looks to capture the same feel. Takaishi and Izawa play a pair of teenage assassins working for an agency that’s trained them to be effective killers, and even provides them with an apartment in which they live together.

With their 20^th birthdays looming the financial assistance the agency provides will cease, so when we meet them their goal is to find normal part time jobs that can subsidise the assassin work. That’s not as easy as it sounds though as Takaishi is a hyperactive extrovert with zero attention span, and Izawa is a laconic introvert with zero social skills. Basically neither of them is able to function particularly well in everyday society, nor do they have any real appetite to, their default being to spend their days slacking on the sofa and playing on their phones between kills.

There’s really not a lot to Baby Assassins beyond the above description. Whereas Hydra’s deliberate pacing felt like it slowly revealed layers of characterisation and a meaningful plot, here everything is very surface level. To enjoy Baby Assassins will largely be dependent on how much you can swallow the self-conscious quirkiness of everything onscreen. A countless number of scenes are dependent on Takaishi’s abrasive loudness played off against Izawa’s almost inaudible mumbling (I think she studied Steven Seagal’s DTV output for her characters inspiration), and if you find the first few of these scenes irritating, it’ll be best to clock out early.

There’s a self-aware level of intended cool to the script which feels too blatant for it to come across as anything other than exactly that, such as when the pair have a casual conversation about what they’re going to eat later in front of their tied to a chair victim, making everything feel a little forced. That’s not to say Sakamoto doesn’t have any good ideas, with the concept of the agency the pair are contracted to being an entertaining one, and the fact that it isn’t explored in much detail actually works in the scripts favour. In some ways its reminiscent of the concept explored in Korea’s A Company Man from 2012, in which So Ji-sub plays a hitman whose role is portrayed like any other white-collar worker. However as fun as the concept is, the unstructured and loose narrative eventually begins to feel like it needs a reason to exist.  

That reason does eventually present itself in the form of an amusingly progressive yakuza leader, played by Yasukaze Motomiya (Tokyo Dragon Chef), and his yakuza offspring. Keen to make the yakuza a more inclusive place for women to be a part of, the kind of “female-centric business” he decides to explore is that of the uniquely Japanese maid café. His visit to one such café is actually one of Baby Assassins genuinely comedic moments, as the hyper-cheerful and attentive maids gradually begin to test his patience in ways which are destined to not end well. Thankfully Takaishi also happens to be on shift in another of her attempts to hold down a part time job, and when she assassinates both Motomiya and his son, it’s left to the daughter to take revenge.

The daughter is played by newcomer Mone Akitani, who’s entire performance consists of screaming her lines in what could best be described as an assault on the ears. Thankfully this semblance of a plot only appears when we’re already over an hour into the punchy 95-minute runtime, and serves up an opportunity for Kensuke Sonomura and Masanori Mimoto to do what they do best. With Takashi loaded up with a machine gun and a pistol brandishing Izawa, the pair descend on Akitani’s yakuza headquarters to shoot pretty much anything that moves. The sequence itself is perfunctory at best, however its saving grace is that it offers up an extended one on one that pits Izawa and Mimoto against each other.

For anyone who’s seen Mimoto unleash in Hydra they should have a good idea of what to expect here, and Sonomura once more choreographs a stand-out fight scene that’s intricate, fast, and brutal. The fight itself doesn’t quite hit the highs of Hydra’s action beats, with the occasional redundant move being thrown in here and there which I couldn’t help but notice, however it’s still head and shoulders above most modern fight scenes. Izawa more than holds her own, and I couldn’t help but think what it would have been like to see her in a Sonomura choreographed fight against Rina Takeda, back when she was still active in the action genre. It always feels a little too enthusiastic to say “I can’t wait to see what she does next” when it comes to action actresses in Japan, so I’ll simply say that if we don’t see Izawa onscreen again for a while, she can be proud of the fight she clocks in here.

As good as the fight may be, it doesn’t earn enough good will towards Baby Assassins to make everything that’s come before it any more tolerable. While Sakamoto clearly has some creative ideas, his ability to bring them to the screen in a compelling way, at least at this point in his career, feels like it’s lacking. There are certainly hints at a brighter future though. Both Takaishi and Izawa’s characters do have moments which illicit empathy, it’s just that far too much of their time onscreen makes them come across as lazy and directionless, traits that they both seem more than happy to wallow in. While there’s been plenty of good (and even great) movies about the slacker lifestyle, here their constant laying around and laboured efforts to do anything else only serve to make the pace drag.

With its loose narrative, bargain basement CGI blood, high pitched yelling, and low frequency mumbling, Baby Assassins will likely only appeal to those action fans who are willing to wait (or perhaps skip forward) to see Masanori Mimoto unleash under the choreography of Kensuke Somomura. It’s really not an action movie, so at the end of the day, it’s both ironic and a little sad that there’s not much to recommend outside of it.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 4.5/10

The post Baby Assassins (2021) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Special Actors” Theatrical Poster

Director: Shinichiro Ueda
Cast: Kazuto Osawa, Hiroki Kono, Miyu Ogawa, Hayate Masao, Nozomi de Lencquesaing
Running Time: 110 min.

By Paul Bramhall 

In 2017 Shinichiro Ueda’s micro-budget zombie movie One Cut of the Dead burst onto the scene fuelled almost purely by word of mouth, a production which cleverly subverted the type of movie audiences thought they were watching to entertaining and hilarious effect. His sophomore feature, following up such a unique slice of cinema like One Cut of the Dead was always going to be a tough ask. In 2019 Ueda handed over the reigns to assistant director Yuya Nakaizumi for the spin-off One Cut of the Dead: In Hollywood, which basically rehashed the original with international cast members and little else. So it was the news that Ueda and Nakaizumi would be teaming up with Naoya Asanuma to co-direct Aesop’s Game, based on Ueda’s script, which generated the most excitement.

Also released in 2019, Aesop’s Game was a joyless attempt to incorporate the cleverness of One Cut of the Dead into a more serious storyline. The problem was, so much time had obviously been spent on making it clever, that such details like engaging characters, a compelling story, and fundamental basics like pacing and tone all fell by the wayside. In short, the magic that made One Cut of the Dead such a pleasure was nowhere to be found. Undeterred, Ueda ditched the co-director approach for his next production, and returned to both solo director and writer duty for Special Actors, which came out at the tail end of 2019 (the advantage of working in low budget cinema – it’s possible to crank out multiple productions within one year!).

Newcomer Kazuto Osawa plays a wannabe actor whose aversion to fainting when feeling even the slightest onset of stress makes getting gigs nearly impossible. That, and his acting kind of sucks. Wearing a perpetually concerned expression and obsessed with an old superhero movie called Rescue Man, Osawa’s nervous disposition is a constant hinderance to him enjoying life. It’s when working part time as a department store guard that he witnesses a couple fend off a molester, leaving the unsavoury low life in a beat-up heap on the ground. After gathering the courage to go and check on him, Osawa is shocked to find out that the molester is his brother, played by Hiroki Kono (Demekin). However even more shock lies in store when he learns that Kono is being paid for the attack by one of the victims – the guy who was on the date. 

It turns out Kono is part of an agency called ‘Special Actors’, the speciality being they can be hired to act in every day situations – if you want to impress your date by courageously fighting off a molester, or need the safety net of an audience that riotously laughs at all of your jokes when doing a stand-up routine – give them a call. However the agency doesn’t just do simple “rent an audience/friend/family member” gigs, they also take on more complex requests, the kind that require full on storyboarding, rehearsals, and even a script to pull off successfully. When a client played by Miyu Ogawa (She’s Gone) pays a visit to explain that her sisters joined a cult, and has promised to give away their family inn so they can make it their HQ, Kono ropes Osawa into also joining the agency. Armed with nothing more than a nervous disposition and a squeezy stress ball that never leaves his grip, he and the other actors set about infiltrating the cult.

There are shades of both Korea’s Cyrano Agency from 2010 and Hollywood’s The Game from 1997 running through Ueda’s latest, and it’s to his credit that he still puts his own stamp on it. Gone is the overly serious tone that put a dampener on much of Aesop’s Game, and back is the lightness of touch and underlying warmth that made One Cut of the Dead such a success outside of its rug pull moments. Osawa’s facial expressions are locked in an almost permanent state of fraught worry, and his brother’s decision to keep his fainting condition a secret from the other actors leads to some genuine laugh out loud scenarios.

The cult, called ‘Musubiri’, comes across as a satire of many similar organisations found in modern day Japan. With an origin story that involves the founder being abducted by aliens and robbed of his voice, he’s able to communicate what the great alien leader wants to say to its followers via a telepathic connection with his father, who then vocalises it to the audience. The setup is as ridiculous as it sounds (even more so when you take into consideration their emblem is the musubi – a rice ball snack), and there’s never any question they’re a bunch of scammers, complete with overpriced holy charms such as random rocks in a jar, or posed headshots of the mute leader, played with an amusing blankness by Tanri.

With Musubiri’s ulterior motives providing the narrative thrust of Special Actors, the loose nature of the initial scenes gives way to a more plot driven structure that comes at just the right time. Once the cult is infiltrated it becomes an amusing game of who’s going to out-scam who, as the actors come up with increasingly risky ways to expose the truth without revealing themselves, and the cult move in to close the deal on the inn with an increased sense of urgency. Creating a welcome undercurrent of tension is the way both sides have a weak link – the actors have to deal with the fact Osawa could faint at literally any time (and frequently does), while in the cult Tanri is revealed to highly superstitious, which often sees him breaking character at inopportune moments.

If any criticism could be levelled towards Special Actors it’s that, at 110 minutes, it’s a little on the long side for a comedy. The result sees an occasional lag in the pacing, however as Ueda’s most ambitious production so far it’s easy to forgive. The extended runtime also allows us to get to know the other actors who are a part of the agency, from the amusing power struggles between the manager and the chief scenario planner, to a timid actress who reveals her love of bondage when the scenario calls for her to be tied up.

Ueda brings everyone together for the finale that takes place during one of the cults gatherings, resulting in one of the most hilarious showdowns of recent years as Osawa embraces his inner Rescue Man, and proceeds to single handedly take on a room full of the cults dedicated followers. Performing the entire sequence in a cold sweat while attempting to stay conscious and not faint, the sheer bizarreness of the scene should be enough to win anyone who’s not already having a good time by this point. Watching Osawa stumble around and fall over people ranks as possibly one of the most aesthetically unheroic heroic sequences ever committed to film, however it delivers its intended comedic beats with aplomb, and proves watching the underdog rise to the occasion is something audiences will never get tired of.

Perhaps an indicator that Ueda now feels the need to incorporate some kind of twist or narrative rug pull in all of his movies since the success of One Cut of the Dead (although let’s resist the temptation to start calling him the Japanese M. Night Shyamalan for now), Special Actors also throws in a final scene reveal that places a different spin on everything we’ve just seen. Thankfully it works well within the context of the narrative, playing into an important character motivation within the plot, and ending things on a satisfying high note. While Ueda is clearly a strong creative force and enjoys stories where not everything is as it seems, he also has an understanding of how to create characters that the audience care about, and here’s hoping his future features will continue to focus just as much on the latter as the former.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 8/10

The post Special Actors (2019) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Cruel Gun Story” Theatrical Poster

Director: Takumi Furukawa
Cast: Jo Shishido, Chieko Matsubara, Tamio Kawaji, Shobun Inoue, Yuji Odaka, Minako Kazuki, Hiroshi Nihonyanagi, Hiroshi Kondo, Saburo Hiromatsu
Running Time: 87 min.

By Henry McKeand

In the 1960s, the Japanese studio Nikkatsu made a string of hard-edged crime thrillers that became known as “borderless action” films. They received this distinction because they borrowed from international influences, combining classic American noir and French New Wave gangster cool with elements of Japan’s own chambara samurai films to create an incendiary new subgenre. 

There’s a cold, uncaring cruelty in the Japanese crime cinema of the time that sometimes borders on sadistic. In a way, it was a sister movement to the then-burgeoning spaghetti western revolution taking place in Italy, and it was a precursor to the Italian Poliziotteschi films of the 70s. American noir could be vicious, sure, but it rarely reached the bloody heights of Nikkatsu’s 60s output. In fact, movies such as A Colt Is My Passport have more in common with the most nihilistic and hard-boiled American crime literature; it’s easy to imagine Jim Thompson and Donald Westlake getting a kick out of Joe Shishido’s countless son-of-a-bitch protagonists. Classic samurai films are talked about more today, but borderless action directors such as Takashi Nomura and Seijun Suzuki were on the cutting edge of the stylized, self-aware violence that has dominated genre cinema for over a half-century.

Takumi Furukawa was another such director, and he made his most enduring work in 1964 with Cruel Gun Story. It has all the trademark elements of a Nikkatsu gangster film, such as a no-frills plot and a modern ronin protagonist. Its basic setup, involving the heist of an armored truck carrying racetrack money, calls to mind earlier American noir classics like The Killing and Criss Cross. But while The Killing mixed formal risk-taking with clockwork execution and Criss Cross found suspense in the slow-burn, Cruel Gun Story revels in fast-paced thuggishness. The heroes and villains are virtually indistinguishable, and the “professionals” of the story are little more than petty, trigger-happy goons. This makes for an energetic, wild dog crime film that’s as cold-blooded as it is vital.

Joe Shishido plays Togawa, a man who is released from prison with the help of powerful gangsters, who in turn want him to hijack an armored truck. Togawa doesn’t like the risk, but his wheelchair-bound sister needs money, and so he agrees. He immediately sets about creating a plan destined to fail and assembling a team of men doomed to betray each other. It doesn’t take a movie buff to see that things won’t go smoothly, and the specifics of the misfortune aren’t necessarily surprising, but the script by Haruhiko Oyabu and Hisataka Kai is filled with enough fun detail to make up for any feelings of familiarity. 

The emotional core is also stronger here than in most Joe Shishido films. Like so many other gangster film icons, Shishido tended to play characters who were too cool and mean and unknowable to ever really connect with, but Togawa is a little different. His protective love of his disabled sister may sound like an emotionally manipulative character note, but it’s understated enough to contextualize his decisions without softening his rough edges. Thanks to the believable stakes and razor-thin possibility of redemption, it’s easy to get invested in Togawaa and the other “good guys.” This is all the film needs to satisfyingly stage its many gun battles and double-crosses.

While Branded to Kill and A Colt Is My Passport employed stylized, sometimes cartoonish violence, Cruel Gun Story lives up to its title by delivering several no-nonsense shootouts. The body count is high, and gunfire is as commonplace as the clanging of katanas in a samurai film. Furukawa knows how to create clear, arresting action scenes, and the relative realism is thrilling when compared to the heightened logic of some Nikkatsu films. Adding to the excitement is the lack of sentimentality; major characters are gunned down as unceremoniously as the nameless cops and cons who fill out the body pile. 

Still, the film is not for everyone. Your enjoyment will depend on your tolerance for calloused heroes and gritty outlaw detail. But for those who love the Yakuza stoicism of Takeshi Kitano or the cops-and-robbers romanticism of Michael Mann, Furukawa’s brand of borderless action is a no-brainer. While it’s not as flashy or eccentric as some of the better-known Japanese pot-boilers, Cruel Gun Story is a more than worthy entry in the Nikkatsu crime canon. 

Henry McKeand’s Rating: 7/10

We couldn’t locate a Trailer, so we located an “intro to the film” by Eddie Muller, by way of uploader Noir Fan, which we thought was a great pairing with the review you just read. Watch it below: 

The post Cruel Gun Story (1964) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes” Theatrical Poster

Director: Junta Yamaguchi
Cast: Kazunari Tosa, Riko Fujitani, Gôta Ishida, Masashi Suwa, Yoshifumi Sakai, Haruki Nakagawa, Munenori Nagano, Takashi Sumita, Chikara Honda, Aki Asakura
Running Time: 70 min.

By Paul Bramhall

The concept of time travel is always an interesting one when it’s transferred to screen, and the Japanese film industry has flirted with it just as much as any other. From modern day military units transported to feudal Japan in the likes of G.I. Samurai, to the quirkiness of Summer Time Machine Blues, to of course the countless romantic spins on the genre. What all of them have in common is characters travelling back to the past, whether it be days or decades, and their need to adjust to a different time period or right a wrong. Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes also uses time travel as its key theme, however it does so in an arguably more minutiae way than any of its predecessors (and perhaps anything that’ll come after it), dealing with a café owner who realises the monitor in his room is capable of showing 2 minutes into the future.

Played by Kazunari Tosa (Prisoners of the Ghostland, Misono Universe), his character lives in the apartment directly upstairs from the café he runs, and this realisation comes about when he returns home one night and the monitor flickers on, his own face staring back at him from behind the screen. His 2 minutes into the future self is back in the café downstairs, and after explaining the strange phenomenon to his current self, his current self heads back downstairs – completing the loop and setting things in motion. Soon the café’s barista, played by Riko Fujitani (Beautiful Dreamer, Asahinagu), gets in on the action, who proceeds to call up 3 of the cafes regulars to also come around and check it out as well. Before you know it, the group find themselves interacting between their current and 2 minutes into the future selves with all of the inconsequence you’d imagine 120 seconds can bring.

The directorial debut of Junta Yamaguchi, the creative force behind the indie production is actually a theatre troupe called Europe Kikaku based out of Kyoto, of which Yamaguchi is a member, as are most of the other cast and crew. The fact that the majority of talent involved in Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes comes from a theatre background makes a lot of sense when you consider that 95% of the punchy 70-minute runtime plays out in a single location – the upstairs and downstairs in a low-rise building. The use of the confined environment enables the 2 minutes plot device to play out via a series of comedic interactions involving the cast talking to themselves through a monitor, a feat which Yamaguchi makes look easy, but had to have taken a substantial amount of precision timed planning behind the scenes.

The plot itself is inspired by scriptwriter Makoto Ueda’s (who also scripted the previously mentioned Summer Time Machine Blues) own self-directed and penned short from 2014, Howling, with the motivation being to stretch out the concept from the shorts 11-minute runtime to a feature length production. Admittedly, Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes’ origins do show through on occasion. There can be no denying that the concept is a one-trick pony, and Yamaguchi spends a little too much time with the cafe’s regulars fooling around and being shouty in a slightly aggravating way. The focus initially seems to be on how many comedic vignettes can be pulled off with the concept, not all of which necessarily work, when it would be far more engaging if there was an actual plot to anchor the gimmick off.

As a result, because of the scenes inconsequential nature, topped off with the fact that we have to watch many of them play out twice (current and future), there are moments that feel like padding. Thankfully Yamaguchi has a plot up his sleeve, and once it kicks in it delivers the required narrative thrust just in time, ensuring that the concept alone isn’t left to carry the entire production on its shoulders. Sure it’s nothing we haven’t seen countless times before – a stash of cash with unknown origins and the yakuza who are looking for it – but paired up with the time travel concept it provides a reason for the audience to get behind the characters, as well as some of the biggest laughs.

Yamaguchi goes for the double whammy on the gimmick front, opting for the one-take approach for the 70-minute duration, although he confessed in an interview that it is in fact made up of several 10-minute takes which have then been blended together in post. The authenticity behind the one-take isn’t the important part here though (as opposed to its importance in productions like One Shot and Crazy Samurai Musashi, where the performers endurance is an integral part of enjoying the single take), rather the flow it gives to the time loop allows both the characters and the audience to experience the 2-minute time travel in real time. 

As much as the previously mentioned productions are defined by the performers sustained physicality during the continuous takes, here the admiration goes to how skilfully everyone involved has executed a narrative which essentially involves them talking to themselves for extended periods. I had to frequently remind myself while watching Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes that the actors are actually not talking to themselves in real time (it was done with recordings), and the complexity behind creating such a unique character dynamic must have been vast. It’s a testament to the passion of the cast and crew that onscreen not once does it come across as questionable or contrived, and the fact that the complexity only increases as the plot progresses but the illusion never wavers is an outstanding feat.

As the owner of the café Kazunari Tosa makes for a likable protagonist. His realisation that he has a monitor that can see into the future is one of understated (almost disinterested) bewilderment, and his lack of enthusiasm to utilise its potential makes him a relatable character for the audience. The short runtime doesn’t give much room for character development, but his change from a passive observer (in his own café no less!) into a somewhat man of action is a convincing one, spurred on by the chance of a date with the café owner next door, played by Aki Asakura (the most recognisable name in the cast, having featured in the likes of Whistleblower and 2017’s live action Fullmetal Alchemist).

Despite this though, there should be no doubt that the real star of the show in Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes is the filmmaking technique itself. Whereas just a few years ago saying a movie looked like it was shot on an iPhone would be considered an insult (see my review for 2018’s The Dark Soul), here the entire thing actually was shot on an iPhone, and it looks just fine. In Yamaguchi’s eagerness as a first time director he also took on the role of cinematographer (something which he openly states he likely won’t do again for his next production!), and his commitment to getting certain shots at certain angles can be seen in the behind-the-scenes footage as he scrambles on top of, over, and around tables and various other objects to maintain the integrity of his vision. 

While Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes has had plenty of labels thrown at it already, from being a time travel movie for the Zoom generation, to One Cut of the Dead comparisons due to its micro budget and one-take approach, in the end both only tenuously relate to the end product that Yamaguchi has crafted. While far from perfect and at times a little too stretched for its own good, ultimately the way such a complex tale has been successfully pulled off from both a technical and story standpoint is difficult not to admire. The fact that some genuine laugh out loud moments are thrown in along the way make its shortcomings easy to overlook, and at just 70 minutes Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes self fulfils its title, not sticking around a minute longer than it needs to.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 7/10

The post Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes (2020) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.

“Drive My Car” Japanese Theatrical Poster

Director: Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Cast: Hidetoshi Nishijima, Toko Miura, Reika Kirishima, Park Yu-rim, Jin Dae-yeon, Sonia Yuan, Ahn Hwitae, Perry Dizon, Satoko Abe, Masaki Okada
Running Time: 179 min.

By Paul Bramhall

It’s perhaps a testament to how much inspiration Japanese author Haruki Murakami is capable of instilling in those who read his work, when you consider that Drive My Car is the second of his short stores in recent years to be adapted into an epic piece of cinema. Korean director Lee Chang-dong adapted the short story Barn Burning from The Elephant Vanishes omnibus into 2018’s Burning, clocking in at 2 & ½ hours, and in 2021 Japanese director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s adapted the short story Drive My Car from the omnibus Men Without Women. Despite the source material being less than 40 pages, transferred to screen Drive My Car transforms into a 3-hour meditation on loss, identity, and what it means to come to terms with a past that can never be fully understood.

Only the 2nd Japanese movie to win the Best International Picture Academy Award after Departures in 2008, Hamaguchi plays with the narrative structure of Murakami’s original work in a way which allows it to connect with audiences more coherently, and promises a richer experience on repeated viewings. Hidetoshi Nishijima (Casshern, Dolls) and Reika Kirishima (Heaven’s Door, Norwegian Wood) are a happily married couple involved in the arts, with Nishijima a successful stage actor and director, and Kirishima a script writer. Nishijima is invited to Vladivostok as a judge at a festival, however when his flight is delayed by a day due to bad weather he returns home, only to find his wife mid-coitus with one of the young actors who’s a part of the drama series she’s penned. 

Sneaking back out before he’s seen, Nishijima carries on like nothing happened, until one day Kirishima tells him they should chat when he returns home from work that day. The chat never happens though, and instead he returns home to find Kirishima dead from a sudden brain haemorrhage. I could say all of this happens as a pre-credits sequence, which is true, however it’s also true to say that the opening credits don’t appear onscreen until the 40-minute mark. When we resume 2 years have passed, and Nishijima accepts the offer to direct a theatre production of Russian playwright Anton Chekov’s Uncle Vanya in Hiroshima. Driving there in his immaculate red Saab 900, things don’t go to plan when he’s told he has to have a designated driver during his time on the production, and despite his protests, ultimately resigns himself to being chauffeured around by a young woman, played by Tôko Miura (Romance Doll, Organ).

While the story itself is a simple one on the surface, it’s the depth of what’s going on just beneath that provides Drive My Car’s most meaningful moments. Nishijima’s red Saab is more than just an out-of-date car, it’s his fortress of solitude and connection to the past. To help him rehearse his lines Kirishima would record herself as the other characters on cassette tapes, leaving gaps for Nishijima to recite his own from behind the wheel, and in the time since she’s past he continues to listen to her voice whenever he’s driving. Now forced to share the space for the first time and cede control of the wheel to someone else, what initially begins as his same routine only with company, gradually gives way to an opportunity for interaction with the living rather than the dead.

Drive My Car is arguably the most mature piece of filmmaking to date from Hamaguchi, a director who’s feature length debut was a remake of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris in 2007. After 2018’s decidedly middling Asako I & II, 2021 seems to be the year when Hamaguchi really found his groove, with Drive My Car being one of two movies he’d release, the other being the anthology piece Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy. Here he handles complex themes with a delicate hand, using the whole process of Nishijima’s involvement in Uncle Vanya, from casting through to the rehearsals, to subtly weave into the narrative the question of how far acting someone else’s words can allow us to understand ourselves, and in turn human nature.

Human nature and its many folies has been a recurring theme in much of Hamaguchi’s work, and here it’s once more at the forefront, with feelings of regret and guilt kept simmering just off the edges of the screen for much of the runtime. As if to comment on the limitation of language as a form of communication, Nisihjima casts his play drawing from a variety of nationalities, and has each of them speak their native tongue during the performance itself. As well as Japanese, we also get Mandarin, Korean, Tagalog, and sign language in the mix, with the actors coming to trust both themselves and each other to know when it’s their line. The expectations that Nishijima impresses upon his performers to give themselves over to the text acts as a mirror to his own life, in which he’s unwilling to give himself over to the present, and the progression of the performance and Nishijima’s own realisations quietly play out in parallel.

Key to everything is the role of Tôko Miura as Nishijima’s driver. What begins as a passive presence, limited to asking Nishijima if he’d like to play the cassette, and seen waiting for him when he finishes at the theatre each day, gradually becomes one that acts as a trigger for transformation in them both. Each silently carries burdens from their past that come to the surface through conversations had as driver and passenger, and Hamaguchi take the bold move to completely refrain from any kind of flashback scenes, instead simply trusting in the power of the actors communicating to convey everything. The stillness of these scenes works beautifully, allowing the audience to feel how their interactions change the dynamic of their surroundings. What was once an old car filled with voices of the past, now becomes a place of mutual confidentiality where secrets can be shared, and journeys started. 

Indeed it’s a cliché to say that sometimes it’s not so much about the destination as it is the journey to get there, however it’s one that could well be applied to Drive My Car. As the movies anchor Nishijima is effective, an actor who has almost made a whole career out of playing characters with an understated calmness. Often it’s put to good use, such as in Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Creepy, but occasionally it backfires like in Mozu: The Movie, where he came across as dull and listless. Here his quiet assertiveness is used well, however during the climactic scene in Hokkaido his performance doesn’t quite deliver the emotional heft the scene calls for, and as a result the moment of release it’s intended to convey doesn’t quite hit the mark.

Similarly, if any criticism could be said of Drive My Car, it’s the way some characters have their respective arcs concluded. One of the main actors in Nishijima’s play, played by Masaki Okada (Confessions, Rage), is given a backstory that makes some of the other characters decisions towards him less than believable, and his fate doesn’t quite resonate, feeling more like a plot mechanism rather than a character choice. However ultimately these are small gripes, and Hamaguchi displays a skilled hand to keep the entire 3 hours never less than engaging through to the final scene, of which the absence of a certain character tells us all that we need to know.  

Equal parts minimalist and contemplative, perhaps Hamaguchi’s greatest triumph with Drive My Car is making 3 hours float by in what feels like a few minutes. He has an ability to draw you into the characters world without even being aware of it, presenting a world where there are no easy truths, but one where solace is to be found in those around us – whether that be from a husband, a wife, a lover, or even a driver. Slow but never deliberately so, emotional while never resorting to histrionics, and thoughtful without ever being pretentious, Drive My Car is a rewarding ride for those willing to take it.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 8.5/10

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