★½
“Eminently forgettable. And I’ve now watched it twice, just to prove that.”
Though I couldn’t put my finger on why, large chunks of this seemed very familiar when I was watching it last night. Maybe it was just the story, cut from a template [mystical book, blah, chosen one, blah-blah, key to all power, etc.] we’ve seen a million times before. But then, when I Googled the film’s title, I realised why: at #6 was my review on our other, non-GWG site, from back in October 2005 when this came out on DVD [which I’ve just seen contains basically the same ‘blah’ line as above. Hey, if I had to watch this twice, you can read it twice. It’s the least you can do]. It made little impact on me then, and it hasn’t improved with time. The main problem is its absolute failure to stand on its own: the movie ends just as the heroine heads off towards the evil emperor who holds said mystical book, which only she can read. The aim was, apparently, to make a trilogy, but three years later, we’re still waiting for any word of the sequel. The moral is, if you’re going to make a series, either get your cash lined up in advance (as in Lord of the Rings), or make your first film capable of working by itself (see The Matrix) – otherwise, you’ll be left with something that looks utterly unfinished.
That aside, this is also not exactly enthralling. While the fight sequences are not bad, they are nowhere near frequent enough, and the first hour in particular is turgidly-paced. Seki (Matiko) is sent into exile for her own protection, as the only person standing between the emperor and world domination. There, her blind sifu (Amendola) teaches her magic and self-defense, while the emperor eventually sends out his sons to look for her – albeit after first waiting a couple of decades for her to grow up. It’s nice to see a good number of Asian-American actors getting decent roles, even if there there is a random mix of ethnicity that detracts from any real sense of time or place. It seems to be trying for some kind of Princess Bride-like vibe, yet the clunky set-up approach taken here would likely tax the patience of even a moderately-impatient eight-year old. Maybe they should have started in the middle, like Star Wars: the second episode has to be better than the first, largely because it can’t be much worse.
Dir: Jimmy Nickerson
Star: Marie Matiko, Sung Yang, Karl Yune, Tony Amendola
We couldn’t wait for this one to get an official American release, so off to Ebay we went for a copy of uncertain origin. This was something of a double-edged sword. It means we get to tell you that this is, hands down, 
Zen (Vismistananda) is the autistic daughter of a Japanese gangster and a Thai woman (Siripong), who betrayed her local partner, a rival boss (Wachirabunjong), to be with her lover. When her mother gets cancer, it’s up to Zen and a chubby friend (Phobwandee) to collect on debts owed. Fortunately, Zen has a sponge-like ability to learn martial arts, be it from Tony Jaa movies on TV, or the school next door, and proves herself adept at “encouraging,” shall we say, repayments from those who are reluctant to pony up. The bad news is, this attracts the attention of her mother’s former employer, who has not forgotten the past and is unwilling to let matters lie. Which, inevitably, leads to a showdown where Zen takes on an apparently infinite line of henchmen – it’s somewhat reminiscent of Kill Bill, Volume 1, in the same way an earlier ice-house battle reminded me of The Big Boss, However, the final fight, on a series of balconies, is bone-shatteringly unique.
If you enjoyed Planet Terror, you’ll likely get a kick out of this, which also combines elements of The Evil Dead, Kill Bill and Tetsuo the Iron Man into what has got to be the bloodiest movie of 2008. The life of Ami (Yashiro) is turned upside down when her brother and his friend are killed by school bullies under the control of a local gangster’s son (Nishihara). Ami sets out for revenge on all those responsible for the killings. But the Yakuza don’t take kindly to this and Ami finds herself with a count of functioning limbs that ends at three. Does that stop her? Of course not. Teaming up with the late friend’s mother Miki (Asami), whose husband happens to be an ace mechanic, Ami gets fitted with a machine-gun and the pair of vengeful vixens head off for a return match.
Yashiro’s background is in…well, what could politely be described as ‘bikini videos’, not action movies, but her performance here is respectable enough. Probably more impressive are Asami, and Honoka, who plays the wife of the Yakuza boss. They both, too, come from the adult industry, possessing an impressive feral intensity which reminded me of Brigitte Lahaie in Fascination, and is entirely in keeping with the grindhouse feel of the entire enterprise. You could argue that the trailer contains everything you need to see, in a more concentrated form, and I wouldn’t argue with that, or if you said this was no more than a porn variant, where nothing matters except the money shots of body fluids getting sprayed everywhere. Still, we had a blast, and the film fully lives up to the sleeve description, delivering the “One-Armed Ballistic Assault Heroine” it promises, in spades.
Look, I speak as one of the few people on the planet who found the original Bloodrayne other than unwatchable dreck. So when I say that the sequel is a soporific, poorly-constructed, badly-executed waste of time and effort for all concerned, including the viewer – for God’s sake, listen to me. There is simply no rhyme or reason present here, right from the setting which goes from Middle Ages Europe to the Wild West without any credible explanation. Billy the Kids (Ward) is a vampire, kidnapping the local kids, in some kind of half-baked plot device that makes no sense, involving him waiting for the railroad to reach town, to spread his curse. I guess going to a town that already 
Sadly, despite the above tagline, the movie doesn’t quite live up to expectations. It has some very interesting ideas, but kinda goes about them the wrong way: I love the idea of a government task-force that roams the world, taking out vampires, werewolves, etc. I enjoy the concept of government-sponsored assassins, working on behalf of pissed-off senators. Instead, for the most part, the film wants desperately to be From Dusk Till Dawn – an admirable target, for sure, even if it falls short on almost every level. Vamp is another obvious touchstone for the script, which has Quinn (Sawa) stop off at the titular strip-club on his way back from Mexico, only to find the buffet is of the patrons, not 
That said, there is a fair amount to enjoy here, with the performances, particularly of Foree and Sawa, being entertaining. Sawa is perfect as a stoner dude who, while initially freaked out for obvious reasons, eventually comes to terms with what’s going on: during the climatic fight between Caitlin and the queen ghoul, he just sits there with a goofy grin on his face, taking it in like we all would. Foree, a horror icon since his performance in Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, also delivers a quirky turn, and there’s a sublime sequence where he and Quinn, both fans of cinematic samurai Zatoichi, imagine what the blind swordsman would do in their shoes. Hu’s role builds gradually throughout the film, and eventually brings this into GWG territory, which I wasn’t expecting initially. She handles the action scenes fairl well, covering all the bases with gunplay, sword skills and martial arts – I note that one of the stuntwomen on the film is Zoe Bell, whom you should remember from her role in Death Proof. If the potential is never fully realized, there is enough going on to make it a pleasant-enough way to spend 85 minutes.
Mad bomber Chris Murdoch (London), is running around Seattle, blowing up Japanese people. FBI agent, Sara Davis (Petty) is part of the team looking into the case, but though they take Murdoch’s Japanese girlfriend (Kawagoe) into custody, Lt Sugimura (Amami) of the Tokyo police sweeps in and demands they release her, so she can be returned home – her father has influence on both sides of the Pacific. Davis won’t let that happen, since the girl is their main hope of catching the bomber; he, needless to say, is none too pleased to find the love of his life in the hands of the police.
The third in the series loses a lot of the loopy insanity that made the first one such a classic. Shiomi is still as kick-ass a heroine as ever, but I have to say, it was a severe struggle to remain conscious throughout, despite the brief 77-minute running time. By most accounts, the story is largely a re-tread of the second film, with Koryu Lee (Shiomi) going from Hong Kong to Yokohama, to track down a missing woman, only to find herself crossing paths, swords and a variety of other weapons, with local organized crime – since the target of her search is now the mistress of Oh Ryu Mei (Yamamoto). He pits wannabe warriors against each others in death matches, to decide who is fit to become a minion, only to find Lee is more than up to taking them on. He turns to freelancer Kurosaki (Kurata), who agrees to take out the unwanted snooper for twenty million yen.