Tag: crime

Female Yakuza Tale: Inquisition and Torture

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★½
“I should have paid more attention to the second-half of the title.”

This starts with a memorable sequence in which Inoshika Ocho (Ike) fights off a number of attackers, armed only with her umbrella; albeit, an umbrella that is rather more heavily-armed than most. While she succeeds, she ends up losing all of her clothes in the process, leading to some artful staging in which the discarded umbrella is used to hide her naughties bits. Unfortunately, the rest of the film, while occasionally reaching the same levels of unsanity is largely crude and unpleasant. Even the central concept – a gang smuggling drugs in the vaginas of junkies – falls firmly into that category.

Ocho falls into the gang’s clutches when an unfortunate wardrobe choice leads them to mistake her for one of their mules. When they discover there is no heroin in our heroine, they try to frame her for the “Crotch Gouge” murders, which they have been carrying out themselves to inspire fear in their employees. She is assisted in escaping this peril by the clan’s former boss, Joji (Uchida), who has just got out of jail to find his spot taken by Goda (Endo), who has embarked on the scheme in question. Since Ocho had some history with an earlier clan boss, after he sacrificed his own digit to save hers, when she was caught cheating in a gambling den, she teams up with Joji to restore the clan’s good name.

Its an odd combination that manages to mix nasty levels of sexual violence with slapstick comedy, and the results are unsatisfying in just about every way. There’s no shortage of breasts on view – particularly at the finale, which echoes the opening, except with the nipple-count increased by a factor of x50. However, the film also diverts itself off into a number of thoroughly uninteresting subplots, which chew up time and offer very little except more Japanese women being pawed. A sequel to Sex and Fury, despite a decent lead character, there was almost nothing here to inspire any interest in seeing its predecessor. I was left with a feeling of distinct exploitation, and not in a good way.

Dir: Teruo Ishii
Star: Reiko Ike, Ryohei Uchida, Tatsuo Endo

Girl Boss: Escape From Reform School

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★★½
“Bad girls go to…the seaside?”

Serial escaper Ruriko (Sugimoto) is more persistent than good, and is dragged back to reform school after her seventh escape attempt ends the same way as her previous six. After whizzing through most of the standards of the women-in-prison genre in about 30 minutes or so e.g. corrupt staff, gratuitous nudity, solitary confinement, etc. she and a few of her colleagues (supposedly teenagers, but that clearly ain’t the case) break out as a group. Splitting up to avoid detection, they arrange a rendezvous at a deserted building by the sea, from where they plan to hijack a ship and escape Japan for good. Truth be told, a sense of urgency isn’t exactly top of the their skill-set, and as they meander their way there, various escapades happen, of which the only significant one is Ruriko meeting, by chance, a male criminal (Watase), who is also trying to out-run the law. But the police are also keen to ensure that they run their record in terms of Ruriko to a perfect 8-for-8…

I watched this less than a week ago, but already, I can’t remember very much about it. Sugimoto is her usual charismatic self, and the film is certainly more interesting when she’s on-screen. However, the supporting characters are entirely forgettable, and in my mind, all merged into one amorophous, largely uninteresting blob. That’s particularly problematic after they split up, which is when the film seems to lose direction entirely, meandering around until the finale, where the police besiege the perps in their beach-house. I have to say, the major takeway from that is how incredibly inept the Japanese SWAT team are. Not only are they easily held at bay by criminals armed with precisely one gun, they mill around like disturbed sheep in the face of anything coming the other way, e.g. burning tyres, and are completely oblivious to even the most basic law-enforcement principle, such as “maintaining a perimeter.” If those are supposed to be the elite, it makes me wonder how the hell Ruriko managed to get herself caught the previous seven times she escaped.

It’s probably significant that the lack of compentence by the special forces of law and order is my lasting memory here. While competently made, and touching all the expected bases [that’s clear from the way solitary confinement in the prison involves Ruriko both bondaged up and topless!], it doesn’t have any real heart or passion, and if you skip this one, you won’t be missing much.

Dir: Sadao Nakajima
Star: Miki Sugimoto, Yuko Kano, Hiroko Isayama, Tsunehiko Watase

Angels’ Brigade

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★★½
“Charlie’s Magnificent 7 Angels.”

After her brother is severely beaten by a drug dealer, Las Vegas lounge singer (!) Michelle Wilson (Kiger, Miss January 1977) is visited by his teacher (Cole), who knows the location of the cartel’s drug warehouse. Wilson puts together a team of women who have reason to want to take the dealers down, including a stuntwoman (Anderson) and an undercover cop (Grant). There’s also a martial-arts instructress, a model and, tagging along, one of the teacher’s pupils. They build a heavily-armed van, train in the ways of war, and rip off a bunch of militia types for weaponry, before staging a successful raid that destroys the warehouse. However, the mob (led by veteran actors Peter Lawford and Jack Palance) are not prepared to let them get away with it.

This is best known through its use – in a severely truncated form – on MST3K, and I suspect that’s where most of the 1,200+ votes on the IMDB come from [it’s more than, say, the rather better-renowned Black Mama, White Mama]. The unedited version is less worthy of derision. I wouldn’t call it great cinema, but it heads from Point A to Point B in a brisk fashion, and the practical effect – stunts, explosions, etc. – are decent enough. Of course, there’s little or no characterization to speak of, on either side, it’s clearly ripped off from Charlie’s Angels, and there’s a weird unevenness of tone that is hard to handle. For instance, the militia types are incredibly incompetent, bumping into each other at the drop of a swastika, but then the girls seriously consider dropping a truck on the head of an informant.

However, I couldn’t bring myself to hate this to the level its former position in the IMDB Bottom 100 would project. There’s something almost charmingly naive about such a simplistic approach, and it’s also refreshingly free of any romantic angles to slow things down. At a few points, I even found myself contemplating the remake potential. If the discussed all-female version of The Expendables ever comes to pass, it might not be too dissimilar to this, though hopefully with more originality.

Dir: Greydon Clark
Star: Susan Kiger, Sylvia Anderson. Jacqulin Cole. Robin Greer

Mother’s Day (2010)

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★★★★
“Hell hath no fury like a mother.”

A loose remake of a somewhat infamous 1980 horror movie [rejected by the BBFC and as yet unreleased in the UK], this is a nastily brutal and effective home-invasion story, with a maternal angle that’s both surprising and well done. On the run after a botched bank robbery, the three Koffin brothers end up in the wrong home, and end up with a houseful of hostages, who were visiting Beth Sohapi (King) and her husband. The criminals call on the rest of their family for help, led by their mother (De Mornay), who is 50% June Cleaver – even providing cake and ice-cream for the residents – and 50% Lizzie Borden, showing absolutely no restraint against anyone she perceives as threatening her brood. As the night progresses, a lot of skeletons come out and we discover the Sohapis definitely do not live up to their name…

What looks initially like another variant on the Last House on the Left takes an abrupt left-turn when Mrs. Koffin shows up. From there on, De Mornay holds the viewer’s attention with an effortless performance which makes you wonder where she has been for the last 20 years. There are certainly echoes of her character from The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, but I’m also reminded, in tone, of Kathleen Turner in Serial Mom. What I think is particularly disturbing is her rapid switch from homespun family wisdom to violence of a particularly cruel sort – and not just physical, but mental, as she is generally astute when it comes to pushing her victim’s buttons. I say “generally,” for Beth provides an opponent that even Mrs. Koffin can’t necessarily read accurately. It’s clear, almost from the start, that this will be heading towards a confrontation between the two.

At 112 minutes, it could seem long, but I can’t say my attention flagged at any point. If there is a criticism, it’s the not uncommon one for the genre, of characters who have to exhibit “stupidity necessary to the plot.” There were certainly points at which Chris rolled her eyes as the victims did not behave in the way she would have; I tend to find how much that impacts my appreciation depends on how blatant that is, and how much I’m enjoying the other aspects of the film. Here, watching De Mornay is so entertaining – I’m hard pushed to think of many comparable, deliciously villainous performances from an actress – that I’m happy to overlook those flaws. I’ve seen and enjoyed other home invasion films, like The Strangers; this takes a very different approach, replacing those faceless monsters with a twisted version of humanity. In some ways, it may be even more effective.

Dir: Darren Lynn Bousman
Star: Rebecca De Mornay, Jaime King, Briana Evigan, Patrick Flueger

Salvage Mice

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★★½
“Mice-ensed to thrill… Albeit, barely.”

Mai (Tanimura) and her partner (Sato) form a team – the titular rodents – who recover art and artifacts, and return them to their “rightful” owners – quotes used advisedly, it’s vague on the details. However, Mai is betrayed, and framed for the robberies actually being committed by the gang operating under the Evil Western Dude (Heselton, who was also the main villain in Karate Girl). Mai encounters Mio (Nagano), part of ‘Hiroshima Cleans’, a group of volunteers who help keep the city tidy. Initially, Mio thinks Mai is the villain, but is eventually convinced that the real bad guy is elsewhere, and the pair team up to take on the villains, including both Mai’s ex and Evil Western Dude.

The main problem is Tanimura, who is incredibly unconvincing in terms of martial-arts skills. Even though her character is supposedly more thief than fighter, there is much more of the latter than the former, and she simply isn’t up to it. Nagano fares rather better in this regard, and there are a few sequences which are decently put-together and well-executed. However, even here, you still find yourself yearning for a presence like Rina Takeda or Jeeja Yanin, who are capable of really upping the pace and delivering blows that look like they have real impact. Too often, that’s not the case, especially when the heroines team up to take on Evil Western Dude.

What works a little better than expected is the stuff around the edges, like Mai pretending to be a tourist to lure Mio into befriending her, or Mio’s relationship with her non-violent colleague in Hiroshima Cleans. This kind of stuff could be grating, but it’s handled with a light enough touch to pass for frothy entertainment, and fits with what could be a showreel for the Hiroshima Tourist Board. There’s more than a hint of anime series Saint Tail here, and it’s entirely PG-rated. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but here, its more blandly inoffensive than family-friendly, and passes the time acceptably, without being at all memorable.

Dir: Ryuta Tasaki
Star: Mitsuki Tanimura, Julia Nagano, Tomohito Sato, Richard Heselton

Stiletto

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★★★½
“Pretty good, but needs to get to the…ah, point quicker.”

Two gangsters are having a discussion in a sauna, when they are brutally attacked by Raina (Katic), the former girlfriend of one. The Mexican is almost decapitated; the other, Greek mob boss Virgil Vadalos (Berenger) is gutted, but survives. He vows to track down his ex-squeeze and unleashes his forces to do so. They include the near-psychotic Lee (Biehn), who has just returend from London with an even more insane sidekick, plus dirty cop Beck (Sloan), who owes Vadalos a favour, and is involved in the investigation from the inside. Keeping those aspects separate becomes more difficult, as the waters become increasingly muddied as more bodies show up, murdered with the titular weapon, the Mexican’s colleagues plot their own revenge, and there’s also the tricky matter of several million dollars in cash which has gone missing.

Quite an impressive cast of (admittedly, second-tier talent) assembled here: outside those already mentioned, Kelly Hu, Tom Sizemore, Dominique Swain, James Franco and D.B. Sweeney all meander across the screen. That, actually, is perhaps part of the problem here: it’s a movie that is likely guilty of trying to cram too much in. It feels overstuffed with both plot threads and characters, which leads to some underdevelopment of both, and that’s a shame, as there are more than enough interesting elements in both to hold your attention. Raina’s motivation isn’t revealed until well into the second half, but makes more than sufficient sense, and it’s wise of the makers to establish her bad-ass credentials right at the beginning. The violence to be found here is both startling and brutal – Lee’s fate is certainly one we’ll remember for a while.

However, as noted, the film seems uncertain of its grounding. Thst’s particular true during the middle, when Raina’s lethal force takes a back seat to the kind of criminal shenanigans, betrayal and back-stabbing with which we’re all overly familiar, and which is much less interesting. Debit points are also due for cover art which, as shown below, shows the heroine wielding a gun, definitely not her weapon of choice. I’m going with our pic on the right, as much more accurate. But, all told, this was better than I was expecting, and actually delivers on the spirit of the cover, if not perhaps the specific details.

Dir: Nick Vallelonga
Star: Stana Katic, Paul Sloan, Tom Berenger, Michael Biehn

Wandering Ginza Butterfly

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★★
“More suited for ‘Cuties with Cues’ than this site.”

Nami is sent to jail for killing a Yakuza boss, and when she is released, returns to the Ginza district of Tokyo to live with her uncle, who runs a pool hall. She gets a job as a hostess in a bar, with the help of her new friend Ryuji (Watase), but the quiet life doesn’t last for long, even as she tries to help the widow of the man she killed – whose petition on behalf of Nami is what helped lead to her early release. For the local mob, in the shape of Okada (Nanbara) and his gang, are sniffing around the bar, seeking to take it over. To settle things, Nami offers to take on Okada’s champion at billiards, a challenge the gangster readily accepts, not realizing he has just been hustled, and that Nami is no mean player herself. Can she win – and even if she does, will Okada live up to his side of the bet?

While certainly fitting in to the overall themes of the genre, with a significant emphasis on revenge and its execution, this is another entry which downplays the more exploitative angles in favor of the dramatic elements. Put another way, if you want tits ‘n’ gore, look elsewhere. If, however, you want ten minutes of billiards with your heroine unconvincingly trying to imitate Paul Newman in The Hustler [a film whose poster can be seen lurking in the background during the match], this will be right up your alley. It’s only at the finale that this delivers; with the ever-loyal Ryuji at her side, Nami ploughs into the Yakuza gang’s HQ, to interrupt their group porno viewing, by releasing some of their other body fluids.

While Kaji possesses some undeniable presence, the script doesn’t live up to expectations, meandering off in directions that prove neither necessary nor interesting, and the billiards match – even with its bizarre drug-withdrawal subplot – is a poor substitute for action. The film was (inexplicably) successful enough commercially to lead to a sequel, which includes Sonny Chiba playing a comedic pimp – I sense this is likely not the best use of his talents, and won’t exactly be rushing to include it in this article.

Dir: Kazuhiko Yamaguchi
Star: Meiko Kaji, Tsunehiko Watase, Koji Nanbara, Tatsuo Umemiya

The Assassin Next Door

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★★★½
“The Professionaless.”

Galia is a sex-slave, kept in captivity in an Israeli brothel. After a failed escape-bid, she is told she has one chance to get back to Russia and be reunited with her daughter: kill an enemy of the man holding her hostage. This she does, but one murder becomes another, with the lure of getting her passport returned and freedom being used to keep her working, just as when she was a prostitute. But at least she has some freedom, and moves into an apartment opposite Elinor (Tayeb), who has problems of her own, in the shape of an abusive husband. The two women bond, both sharing dreams of escaping their violence-plagued lives. However, acting on those dreams is unlikely to be easy, with the men in their lives unlikely just to let them walk.

Kurylenko is likely familiar from her role as a Bond girl in Quantum of Solace, but this is a good deal darker. Indeed, if you’re expecting an action-packed treat, this will probably disappoint: except for the final 20 minutes or so, it’s far more of a character piece, depicting a pair of damaged souls and the comfort they find in each other’s company (which teeters on the edge of Sapphic at one point before, probably wisely, stepping back – not soon enough to avoid Chris’s sarcasm entirely, however!). Not all of this works, including a lengthy trip to some kind of religious bath-house which, frankly, seems purely an excuse to see Kurylenko undress. The good news is that the performances are solid enough to make this kitchen-sink drama hold up, and when there is action, Lerner delivers it well, in particular an assassination attempt in a night-club which features some impressively Palma-esque camerawork (and is our video of the month for this update).

The film does leave some troubling questions: how, exactly, did Galia go from being a mother in the Ukraine, albeit one with issues but who does love her daughter, to being locked up in Israel? I know this isn’t the focus of the film, yet it would seem to be a crucial issue that needs addressing. However, the flaws are largely overcome by the strength of the acting, and when things kick into high-gear for the final confrontations, it delivers, with a shoot-out on a bus that is an impressive bit of close quarters film-making. Manage your genre expectations with this one, and you won’t be disappointed.

Dir: Danny Lerner
Star: Olga Kurylenko, Ninet Tayeb, Zohar Shtrauss, Liron Levo
a.k.a. Kirot

Touch and Go

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★★★
“Nice opening, solid middle… Let’s leave it at that, shall we?”

This 1980 film was originally called Friday the Thirteenth, but went through a title change in production, after they discovered some other film with that title being made… No hockey-masks to be seen here: instead, it’s the story of three young women, Eva (Hughes), Fiona (Contouri) and Millicent (Duncan), who start robbing places, largely for amusement – they donate the proceedings to an orphanage. However, after one of their victims ends up making far more money than they do, thanks to a bogus insurance claim, they switch targets and set their sights on a bigger fish, in the shape of a luxury hotel which contains a bank, jewellery store and other treats. This requires expanding their team, but with larger hauls come larger risks, as they find out, even once the actual crime has been carried out.

As a light, frothy Ozploitation and distaff take on something like Ocean’s 11, it’s aimiable viewing, bubbling along on the charisma of its leading ladies – one a locksmith, another a bored housewife, the third a children’s radio presenter. In contrast, the men are not exactly the sharpest tools in the box, easily manipulated, even the policeman that Millicent is dating. The main issue is a plot which has the heist taking place somewhere near the middle of the film, when it should probably have been the climax. It’s a nicely-put together extended sequence, but the post-heist antics are easily the least interesting aspect of proceedings, sliding into borderline farce.

The performances are pretty good, even Hughes as a slacker gardener – I say “even”, since he was better known as a singer-songwriter, still fairly well-known down under, and also did the film’s soundtrack. Hughes is the likely standout, and has gone on to have a solid career in film and TV [she played the aristocratic woman with whom Phoebe Cates came to stay in Princess Caraboo]. She and her co-stars keep this a fluffy confection that, while dated, has not been too badly crippled by the passage of three decades. Well, not nearly as much as the unfortunate scripting which leaves the viewer feeling almost like they’re watching the reels out of order.

Dir: Peter Maxwell
Star: Wendy Hughes, Chantal Contouri, Carmen Duncan, Jon English

The Yakuza Wives

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★★★½
“Could comfortably kick the asses of The Mob Wives.”

Perhaps a better title, however, would be Yakuza Sister, since this is a tale of two siblings. Tamaki (Iwashita) is an actual mid-level Yakuza wife, who is running their branch of the gang in the jailed absence of her husband, and doing quite well at it, enhancing its size and reputation. She is largely estranged from both her sister Makoto (Kitase) and their father – she’s a bartender, he works in his machine shop, but it’s clear from the get-go that his time is limited [this isn’t much of a spoiler when you see him coughing his lungs out while simultaneously chain-smoking]. Two things upset their semi-orderly lives. The overall head of Tamaki’s clan dies, opening up a power vacuum which sets off a struggle between rival factions, and Tamaki attempts to arrange a ‘suitable’ marriage for her sister. Makoto rebels, taking up instead with Kiyoshi Sugita (Sera) – which is unfortunate, because he’s a loyal member of the faction now battling Tamaki’s group for control.

The first in a long-running series of films, both direct sequels and knock-offs of the basic concept, this is somewhere between The Godfather and a soap-opera. Among the things I apparently learned from this were, that in Japan, organized crime syndicates have press-conferences to detail leadership changes, and that the best way to get a Japanese women to marry you, is to rape her. Who knew? [Legal note: GirlsWithGuns.org does not make any claims regarding the reliability of this information, and accepts no responsibility for any damages, prosecutions or severed digits resulting from acting on it.] It’s a bit of an uncomfortable mix, but the steely-gaze of Iwashita and her character’s single-minded dedication to the cause is impeccable: she’s a better female character than anyone in Coppola’s trilogy.

Things head towards their expected tragic outcome, but there are a few twists along the way, as well as an interesting cat-fight between the two sisters, when Makoto opts for her husband over her family. About five minutes in duration, there’s only about three cuts as they brawl their way around the apartment, in and out of the closet, before collapsing, exhausted. If not exactly a martial-arts epic, it’s an interesting stylistic choice, quite unlike anything else I’ve seen, and is presented for your viewing below. If a little low on the action quotient outside of this, it’s a solid piece of drama that should keep the spectator interested.

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