“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.

“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.

“Re:Born” Theatrical Poster

Director: Yuji Shimomura
Cast: Tak Sakaguchi, Yura Kondo, Takumi Saito, Mariko Shinoda, Akio Otsuka, Orson Mochizuki, Kenta Akami, Masaya Kato, Rina Takeda, Saori Izawa
Running Time: 100 min. 

By Paul Bramhall

The swansong of Tak Sakaguchi (here billed as Tak ∴), Re:Born has certainly had one of the more interesting journeys to the screen. Having been plucked from Japan’s underground street fighting circuit by director Ryuhei Kitamura to headline the 2000 cult hit Versus, Sakaguchi has maintained a constant presence in the Japanese film industry, but has rarely matched the popularity of his debut. The closest he came to replicating the success of Versus came in the form of 2005’s Death Trance, which was helmed by the fight choreographer of Versus, Yuji Shimomura. Still, many of his fans were willing to bide their time in the belief that Sakaguchi still had another worthy action flick in him, until in 2013, their hopes were seemingly dashed forever when he announced his retirement from the film industry.

However it was a retirement that didn’t last long, when in 2015 Sakaguchi issued a statement in which he confessed to being so surprised by the number of fans that reacted to his plans of retirement, he decided to make one last action movie, just for them. His exact words were that he planned to “create the very last and most superb action movie with my utmost power and passion, for the sake of a closure to my entire career.” The man he went to in order to help him achieve his dream was Yuji Shimomura, and together, they began to work on what would become Re:Born.

This is of course the clean cut version of the story. Actually Re:Born could well be speculated to be the offshoot of a long gesticulating project between Sakaguchi and auteur director Sion Sono, titled Kenkichi, that somehow never came to pass. While some said the Sakaguchi featuring segment in Sion’s Why Don’t you Play in Hell? was likely all that was left of the project, here Sion also receives a credit under the mysterious title of ‘Collaborated with Original Draft’, so it seems likely that Re:Born was also once planned to be Kenkichi. Either way, it’s good to see Sakaguchi and Shimomura together again, having last collaborated together in the capacity of star and action director on the 2011 Sushi Typhoon flicks Yakuza Weapon and Deadball.

Despite both titles being announced in 2015, Re:Born shares a lot of similarities with the Mo Brothers Indonesian action movie Headshot. Simply swap Iko Uwais’ character with memory loss with Sakaguchi’s who wants to forget, and the nurse who restores Uwais back to health, with a young girl that views Sakaguchi as her uncle. The core structure of a group of assassins trained since birth to kill, only for one of them to recognize their humanity and rebel, remains the same. However neither Headshot nor Re:Born are the first movies to use this trope (Broken Path immediately springs to mind), and thankfully both Sakaguchi and Shimomura seem to be aware of why audiences are checking in.

That reason is of course for the action. Despite Sakaguchi’s authentic fighting credentials, it’s never been his action performance alone that’s drawn audiences to his movies. We all know it takes more than being able to bust out a move to be a movie star, and Sakaguchi has that ‘more’ factor. He comes with a cocky swagger, and a striking look perfect for the camera, a combination that likely played a part in the successful timing of Versus, made in an era when Asian action movies in general were going through a drought. When Shimomura last directed Sakaguchi in Death Trance, it was sold on the novelty that Sakaguchi was going to be wearing a special type of padded glove, one that allowed him to strike his opponent full force, and Re:Born comes with a similar novel premise.

Rather than a piece of apparel, the selling point here is that of a newly developed fighting style, made especially for the movie, called the Zero Range Combat System. Created by combat strategist Yoshitaka Inagawa, who also plays Sakaguchi’s main opponent, the style focuses on dispatching enemies as swiftly as possible, usually with a series of bladed weapons (from extendable shovels to Silat style curved daggers). Taking on the role of Combat and Tactical Supervisor, Inagawa choreographs the action along with Sakaguchi and Shimomura, and proceedings get suitably bloody in the latter half of Re:Born once the young girl Sakaguchi is the acting guardian of is kidnapped by the bad guys.

Much like in Death Trance, Shimomura imbues Sakaguchi’s character with a certain legendary mythos. Characters sometimes speak of a rumoured super soldier by the name of the Reborn Ghost, a killer so skilled no one has ever seen him, yet he’s known to have operated in wars as far back as Vietnam. Of course, as the head villain himself says, if the myth was true he’d be an elderly man by now, so it must simply be that – a myth. Or is it, and does Sakaguchi have some kind of connection to this Reborn Ghost? He plays his weary former soldier as a kind of ungodly cross between John Wick, Rambo, and the Glimmer Man – appearing from the shadows, most at home amongst death, and able to dodge bullets. Literally, I mean this guy dodges more bullets than Neo.

It’s a quirky trait, and one that was played strictly for laughs in Yakuza Weapon, so to see it taken so seriously here is tricky to ascertain exactly how much we’re supposed to buy into it. Indeed Re:Born’s tone is a serious one, with the first half spent on serious stuff that doesn’t necessarily gel together, or even mean anything once we get to the action packed latter half. Sakaguchi’s talk with a psychiatrist, his heavily scarred ex-teammate who wanted to die on the battlefield, and his friendship with a local bar owner are all setup as meaningful interactions, but are all but forgotten about once we move into Sakaguchi and Shimomura’s favorite locale – the forest. It’s fair to say that characterisation wasn’t high on the agenda for Re:Born, despite the longer than standard lead-up to the good stuff.

Some characters could arguably have been left out altogether. Two comrades Sakaguchi gets teamed up with, half Japanese half African American actor Orson Mochizuki, and Kenta Akami, serve little purpose. Mochizuki is particularly irritating in his constant switching from English to Japanese within the same sentence, especially when the English is “aaaaaight.” By enlarge, the bad guys, despite sporting cool names like Fox, Eagle, and (wait for it) Abyss Walker, serve as fodder for Sakaguchi’s blur of stabbing and slashing. However despite the only real threat to Sakaguchi being Inagawa’s psychotic super soldier, the action scenes still deliver the required thrills, even if they are edited a little too quickly.

The trio of Sakaguchi, Shimomura, and Inagawa were clearly eager to show off their Zero Range Combat System. This is no more apparent than when Sakaguchi finally clears the forest and arrives at the bad guy’s base, only for him to tell Mochizuki to go ahead, just so he can go back and finish off the enemies still lurking in the woods, even though it’s completely unnecessary. Completely unnecessary, but it does allow for some more outdoor mayhem. Unfortunately despite the intensity of the action onscreen, it’s frequently dampened by composer Kenji Kawaii’s terminally dull score, which rarely matches the tone of the scene. Music can be a powerful accompaniment to any fight scene, however here it’s unfortunately a good example of how a soundtrack can impact an action scene negatively.

Thankfully we do get a one-on-one finale of Sakaguchi versus Inagawa, which provides one of Re:Born’s few empty handed fights. It’s interesting to say the least. Armed with a weapon, the movements can best be described as a kind of crinkly clothed samba (you’ll know what I mean once witnessed), but empty handed it kind of resembles an amateur capoeira practitioner who got drunk and decided to bust out a few moves. I admit the scene drew a laugh out of me rather than the desired thrill, but it still deserves points for originality.

Despite not having the strongest narrative, in the context of Sakaguchi’s career it arguably provides a worthy swansong. The Japanese action movie has already been dead for a long time, so any attempt to breathe some life back into it was never going to be a big budget affair, and that’s clear to see here. But for those who enjoyed the likes of Bushido Man and Sakaguchi’s other movies, there’s little to complain about. Throw in welcome cameos from fellow Japanese action talent such as Masaya Kato (Mark Dacascos’s opponent in the finale of Drive), and Rina Takeda (providing narration only as the older version of the young girl), while Sakaguchi’s career didn’t go out with a bang, it definitely did go out with a knee driven knife to the throat.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 6.5/10

The post Re:Born (2016) Review first appeared on cityonfire.com.