Tag: v

Vengeance Served Cold

  By

★½
“More like undercooked. “

At the age of fifteen, Madison Michaels saw her prostitute mother beaten and killed by Renegade (Cross), a vicious local pimp. His homicide goes unpunished. Ten years later, Madison (Linton) is a counsellor, trying to help drug addicts and hookers get off the streets. She discovers that Renegade is still abusing women, and gets no help from the police, with Detective Straker (Williams) saying he can do nothing based on her hearsay. Against the advice of her friends and sister Lydia (Jeffries), Madison hatches a plan to take the pimp down, and clean the streets of thus piece of scum. Naturally, it doesn’t initially go quite as planned, with the trap set for Renegade backfiring, followed by betrayal from an unexpected direction. 

Even at seventy-five minutes long, this somehow manages to outstay its welcome in short order. On a shallow level, I eventually understood why Renegade may not have been prosecuted, yet the explanation falls far short of being fully convincing. It is still more than we get, in terms of a reason why Madison waited ten years before deciding to take any action. It’s not like she or Renegade went anywhere. Sure, she’s learning martial arts from her (not particularly awe-inspiring) sensei. Yet the level which she has reached doesn’t seem, for example, to reach any kind of critical threshold, such as the one necessary to take down a sadistic street thug with no moral qualms. In two minutes, I came up with a better plot: Madison went away, joined the army, and is now back, armed with the skills she needs to take on Renegade.

The poverty of the production too often gets in the way. Witness, for example, the penultimate scene, which was clearly filmed on a windy street, resulting in the dialogue being inaudible over the breeze rattling across the mics. Walmart sells a variety of wind covers for microphones at a cost of less than ten dollars. That this was, apparently, beyond the movie’s resources, tells you all you need to know. Similarly, the supposedly “brutal” death of the heroine’s mother consists of not much more than the actress lying on the floor with her eyes open. As a result, this rarely manages to approach a convincing depiction of life on the streets.

Some slight credit is due to Davis for exercising restraint on the soundtrack. It actually feels like it belongs to a proper film, rather than the director’s Spotify on random, as is usually the case in these films. This is not enough to overcome a script that simply does not have enough going on, even at the short duration present. There’s no particular sense of escalation, and what should have been the climactic face-off between Madison and – let’s remember, since the movie seems all but to forget this – the man who killed her mother in front of her, falls flatter than a day-old crepe. To continue the culinary metaphor of the title, I’m sending this one back to the kitchen.

Dir: Shaan Davis
Star: Kameka Linton, Aviator Cross, Chyrod Williams, Brandy Jeffries

The Vigilante

  By

★★★
“The Noise of Freedom”

Not to be confused with A Vigilante, this is rather more downmarket and straightforward. It’s likely less thought-provoking, yet probably works a bit better as entertainment, albeit being so basic as to border on the simplistic. Marine Jessica (Jandreau) comes back from a tour of duty in the Middle East with PTSD, following an encounter with a kid wearing a suicide vest. Almost immediately on her arrival, however, her 13-year-old sister, Aimee (Timmons) is kidnapped by sex-trafficker Frank (Cesario), who plans to sell her off in the vilest of ways. It’s a race against time for Jessica and her army buddy and tech wizard Dan (Pierce) to track down those responsible before… [/gestures vaguely] y’know…

If this feels like it has a certain similarity to an unexpected hit in cinemas this summer, you’re probably right. In the movie’s defense, this has been in the pipeline for five years or more, so it can’t be called a quick cash-in – though The Sound of Freedom goes back even longer. Interestingly, director Whittaker worked on Freedom as a stunt co-ordinator, part of a career in that field which goes back to the early nineties. He brings that experience to The Vigilante and it shows, with the action probably the film’s best element. There are a couple of undeniably impressive fights for Jandreau, in particular the final one after she has located the house in which Aimee is being held by her kidnappers.

The other elements are a bit more variable. It begins with an earnest recitation of facts about sex trafficking, with voice-over from (real?) victims detailing where and at what age they were ensnared. But the concept of Frank literally ploughing into the car in which Aimee is a passenger, in order to kidnap her to order out of the wreckage, is hugely, almost ludicrously, implausible. The reality of sex-trafficking is considerably less dramatic: like murder, it’s far more likely the perpetrator is someone known to the victim, rather than a complete stranger. Some of the other elements also don’t feel like they ring true, and the sheer number of shots of underage girls in white underwear had me expecting Chris Hansen to pop out of my closet.

Another weak spot if quite what Dan is doing to locate the trafficking houses which Jessica and he then hit. It’s only vaguely explained, in tech-speak of the least convincing kind. However, there are times where the film does still hit the mark, such as the line said by one of the girls with almost chilling off-handedness: “The first time is the worst. Then you simply go numb.” You sense any creepiness is entirely deliberate, although it is undeniably playing up the more sensational aspects for the viewer. Nothing new there, of course. In many ways, The Vigilante is simply a spiritual successor to the white slavery movies which date back well over a century to the silent era, and titles like Traffic in Souls. As such, this is no better or worse; it succeeds well enough, despite low ambitions.

Dir: Lee Whittaker
Star: Jet Jandreau, Eric Pierce, Jamie M. Timmons, Julien Cesario
a.k.a. Aimee

Vesper

  By

★★★½
“Battle Angel Nausicaa”

As the above suggests, I was getting a strong manga influence, in particular from the works of Hayao Miyazaki: it feels like the script could have been something he’d have written on a gloomy Wednesday in January. Feisty teenage heroine? Check? Ecological message? Check. For this takes place after some kind of change in the world, which has left the bulk of the population clinging on to existence by their grubby fingernails, in a world now owned by bizarre flora. Vesper (Chapman) is one such, tending to her paralyzed father (Brake) whose consciousness has been transferred into a drone. She trades with her uncle, Jonas (Marsan), swapping blood for the seeds they need to survive.

Yet there’s also elements of Battle Angel Alita, with a sharp delineation between the haves and the have-nots. The latter live privileged lives in Citadels, served by artificial lifeforms called “jugs”, and as suppliers of the seeds, hold everyone else in their control. One day, a Citadel craft crashes near Vesper’s home, and she rescues Camelia (McEwen) from the wreckage. She promises to take Vesper and her father back to her home. Yet it eventually becomes clear that Camelia is not being 100% honest about her own situation either. On the other hand, she is potentially the key to liberating everyone from under the thumb of the Citadels, and ending their monopoly on the resources necessary for survival. It’s not something the rulers will give up easily, however.

This is rather ponderous in its progress, running close to two hours, and is clearly content to take its time getting to any of its points. If you’re willing to accept that, there’s a lot to appreciate here, not least some great visual style and world-building. This has to be one of the most fully convincing post-apocalyptic landscapes I’ve seen, a remarkable achievement considering its budget was a mere five million Euros. Vesper is a heroine right out of the Nausicaa playbook: someone who is smart and brave, rather than physically strong, devoted to her family, and who has an inherent affinity for the natural world. Her mother left the family, under circumstances best described as murky, and Camelia is a surrogate, to some extent.

It does feel as if the makers fell in love with their creation a little more than I did, and wanted to wallow in the imagination, at the expense of developing the plot. No-one seems in a particular hurry here, and for every scene which moves the story forward, there’s another that seems to exist purely as a visual showcase. I think it might work better at 90 minutes than 120 – or alternatively, expanded beyond the confines of a feature film. This is the kind of thing I could certainly imagine HBO developing into a series. The ending came close to toppling into “Eh?” territory, before a final shot where it made sense, and wrapped things up on easily the most optimistic note we’d heard. Miyazaki would likely approve.

Dir: Kristina Buozyte, Bruno Samper
Star: Raffiella Chapman, Rosy McEwen, Eddie Marsan, Richard Brake

Veronica

  By

★★★
“Teaching moment”

Veronica (Beltrão) is a teacher in a Rio de Janeiro school. One day, nobody comes to pick up one of her pupils, Leandro (de Sá), so she accompanies him back to his house in the Rio slums known as favelas. Only, on arrival, she finds out his parents have been shot dead by gangsters. His father had been playing a dangerous game as an informant to the cops, and it had finally caught up with him. However, that morning, he had given his son a thumb drive containing a bombshell video, and his former employers are very keen to get it back. And, it turns out, so are the police, some of whom are in cahoots with the criminals. This leaves Veronica in a difficult position, with nobody she can be sure is trustworthy – including even her ex-husband, Paulo. a police officer himself.

In terms of action, the picture on the right is more the exception than the rule, if truth be told. Veronica spends more time avoiding those are seeking to harm her and/or Leandros; there’s considerably more running than shooting, shall we say. But she’s still an action heroine, brave enough to face enemies whom any normal person would think twice about going up against [or several more times, if they’ve seen the brutal reality of favela life and police corruption which is the awesome Elite Squad]. Even more impressive, it’s not for anyone related to her by blood, just a kid in her class. I dunno about your primary school teachers, I’m not sure many of mine would have put their lives on the line against a posse of well-armed gangsters for my sake. :)

Is it just me, or does this feel a bit like Gloria, with a woman having to protect a young boy from gangsters, over incriminating evidence? I did enjoy the setting though, with a side of Rio being a very long way from the more glossy aspects which the tourist board want you to see e.g. Mardi Gras and Christ the Redeemer. The city shown here seems considerably more alive, yet with that energy comes a perpetual undercurrent of menace, with violence present just below the surface. This begins with the opening scene, in which the gangsters hang out on a roof with an impressive (or disturbing, depending on your point of view!) amount of weaponry. It does a good job of establishing the threat here, and that then informs much of what follows.

The relationship between Veronica and Leandros is key to the movie, and it’s a bit of a mixed bag. At times, it seems very genuine, yet at others, Leandros has the usual issue with child actors, where their performance is obvious, instead of feeling natural. I will confess the climax also felt a little disappointing, with the heroine having to rely on the actions of others. The previous 90 minutes had shown her as being self-reliant and full of initiative, and I’d rather have seen this continue through the end. So, some way short of perfect, yet there are positives as well, and this still felt like a worthwhile experience.

Dir: Maurício Farias
Star: Andrea Beltrão, Matheus de Sá, Marco Ricca, Giulio Lopes

Voevoda

  By

★★½
“Never mind the Bulgars”

Well, at the very least, we get to cross another country off the map, in the Action Heroine Atlas. This comes from Bulgaria, and seems to have been a labour of love for Sophia, who co-wrote, directed, produced and starred in it (her daughter plays the younger version of the lead). You don’t see that often, especially in our chosen field. Yet I suspect it could end up having caused more problems than it solves. I’ve often found that films where one person wears so many hats, end up being too “close” to be entirely successful. By which I mean, the maker is so involved they can’t see the flaws, when another pair of eyes might have been able to identify and correct these issues.

I believe this is based on a historical figure. Though I say this based almost entirely on an IMDb review which says, “Rumena was a real person and we know what happened to her.” Well, perhaps Bulgarians do. I have no clue, and was unable to find much out on the Internet: even the film’s website was vague on details. I am also largely ignorant – and, I freely admit, this is a me problem – about Bulgarian history. It seems that at the time this was set in the 19th century, the country was occupied by the Ottoman Empire. That’s about all I’ve got, and can’t say I learned much more from the movie.

The heroine is Roumena (Sophia), who is targeted by the Ottoman occupiers, and subsequently heads off into the mountains and woods, to become the titular leader of a group of bandits and rebels. From there, she wages a guerilla war on the Ottomans. For instance, after they kidnap a young village woman, she and the rest of her cheta kidnap the two sons of the commanding officer, in order to exchange them. This insurgency eventually leads to the Ottomans sending a whole mass of troops after her. Yet Roumena’s example has also helped foster a desire for independence in the locals – albeit at the cost of effectively having to abandon her young son, so that he can have a safe, and somewhat normal childhood.

It’s all quite impenetrable, with limited dialogue and largely non-professional actors. While this likely does enhance the realism, it feels like it comes at the cost of genuine drama. The saving grace is Sophia, who cuts a interesting figure as Roumena: all fierce and unwilling to compromise in any aspect of her life. She wins leadership of the cheta by, literally, wrestling for the position, and takes no shit from anyone. Yet at 126 minutes long, it feels too much of a slog through the wilderness, with a permanently surly supporting cast who are largely distinguishable from each other, only by their facial hair. If you can imagine a dour version of the Robin Hood legend, in which Robin gets betrayed by his merry men, then you’ll be along the right lines.

Dir: Zornitsa Sophia
Star: Zornitsa Sophia, Valeri Yordanov, Goran Gunchev, Dimitar Trokanov

V for Vengeance

  By

★★★
“The Vampire Slayers.”

This is briskly entertaining, and feels like a female version of Blade, with an extra good-girl vampire as a bonus. Yet it’s definitely best not to pause and think about some aspects, because the story will likely fall apart under close scrutiny. Matters are complicated by a flashback-heavy structure, on occasion multiple levels deep, and an apparent desire to overstuff proceedings, at the expense of some elements. That said, it hangs together and is entertaining, mostly thanks to a likeable pair of lead performances. There is a decent quantity of hand-to-hand action, even if some of it does leave a little bit to be desired on the quality front.

Our heroines are Emma (Hudon) and Scarlett (Van Dien), sisters who were abducted from their adoptive parents, and turned into vampires by the evil Thorn. They eventually broke away from his control, and have just learned their third sibling, Kate (Dyer), is not as dead as they had long presumed her. Indeed, she has just succeeded in inventing a vaccine that can “undo” vampirism; it’s based on their mother’s research, a rare blood-type being the reason the trio were adopted. With the help of a bounty hunter called Marcus (Russell), they set out to re-unite with Kate, unaware that Thorn has similar designs on her, albeit for entirely different reasons. There’s also the Federal Vampire Control agency, who’d be more than delighted to see Thorn and/or Emma and Scarlett taken out of action.

Quite a lot of this which will be familiar if you’ve seen a reasonable number of vampire films, such as the tech’d up accessories, as well as the enhanced speed/power of the vampires. However, none of this is used to particular effect: the good old stake through the heart seems to be the most effective weapon. Similarly, the FVC seems little more than an afterthought, which plays almost no meaningful part in proceedings. Instead, this is at its best when going its own way. Emma tries only to feed on bad people, e.g. rapists, and there’s an amusing scene near the start with her increasingly less subtle efforts at entrapment falling on entirely stony ground. I’d like to have seen more of this tongue-in-cheek approach.

I did enjoy Hudon and Van Dien’s performances, which do manage to capture a real sense of sisterly love/hate. However, Marcus’s role is utterly obvious, and a later flashback shows he should definitely have been recognized by one of the siblings. Very convenient and selective amnesia is a wonderful cinematic thing, isn’t it? It’s this kind of sloppy scripting which stops this from potentially reaching the level of cult classic. The movie is nicely shot, and doesn’t look cheap, though the doubling for some of the stunts is occasionally a little too obvious. It feels as if it could have been a pilot for a series, although it’d need to find another Big Bad. A role-reversed version of Buffy, with the vampires doing the slaying, might have been fun.

Dir: Kelly Halihan
Star: Jocelyn Hudon, Grace Van Dien, Christopher Russell, Pauline Dyer

Violet

  By

★★
“Love the poster. The film? Not so much.”

There’s a decent idea here, and an attempt to add some new wrinkles to that old reliable, the rape-revenge genre. Unfortunately, there are too many problems and missteps to make this a worthwhile entry. Violet (Winkler) is an aspiring actress, whose dreams are shattered when she falls for a fake audition. She is lured into a basement, raped, and the resulting footage posted on a highly-dubious website. She’s clearly broken by the trauma, to the increasing worry of her mother (Burns). But hope is present in her growing relationship with Josh (Crowe), a young man she met at the lake where Violet likes to sit, trying to find some measure of peace. However, how will he react when he finds out about her other life, in which she is making those responsible for the assault, pay.

The main theme this seeks to illustrate, appears to be the proverb about revenge and digging two graves. There’s not much uplifting about the process through which Violet goes, and you’d be hard pushed to argue that, at the end, she finds herself in a better place. She may have made her attackers regret what they did, in no uncertain fashion. [Ironically, she posts the resulting videos on the same site, and acquires a bit of a cult following as a result.] However, it doesn’t fix the problem: her thespian ambitions, for example, can never be restored to what they were. Indeed, there turns out to be a high price to be paid, though it has to be said, this results from one of the more unlikely plot twists I can remember.

That development is just one of the problems with this, which managed to keep taking me out of the narrative, just when it seemed to be pulling me in. For example, Violet’s “mother” looks, acts and sounds about three years old than the 21-year-old heroine, and is so unconvincing in this role, she sticks out like a sore thumb. The extended chit-chat between Josh and Violet also rarely surpasses the level of of his self-composed poems. At least they nailed the bad teenage verse aspect: I literally LOL’d at his rhyming of “shoulder” with “boulder”.

I’m not sure about Winkler’s performance, which is hurt by inconsistency. There are points when she seemed thoroughly believable, selling the pain of her experiences. Yet, two minutes later, it was as if a switch had been flipped and no trace of the trauma could be seen. While that may have been a deliberate dramatic choice, it feels false. I did appreciate, however, the decision to leave the rape almost unportrayed. We see only a fraction of the resulting video on the Internet, and I’m fine with that. I’ve always been about the revenge, and that doesn’t feel any less justified as a result of that choice. Overall though, it doesn’t mess sufficiently well to deliver the necessary impact.

Dir: Samuel Vainisi
Star: Alyss Winkler, Jason Crowe, Ember Burns, Keith Voigt Jr.

Vanquish

  By

★½
“Red, white and blew”

I want to like Rose, who seems to be making a concerted effort to become an action heroine. It hasn’t always worked out – see The Doorman – but she keeps plugging away. It’s against that background I watched this, which I knew going in ranked among the worst-reviewed action heroine movies, certainly of this year, and probably all-time. As I write, it’s at 4% on Rotten Tomatoes and 2.7 on the IMDb. For comparison, the latter scores both Barb Wire and Catwoman at a 3.4. Hell, even Bloodrayne comes in at 2.9. But surely Vanquish could not possibly be worse than that? Unfortunately, I am here to tell you: yes, it can. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a wax bowl of fruit. LOOKS like the real thing, but contains no nutritional value, and isn’t even a pleasure to eat.

Michael Caine famously said of his role in Jaws 4, “I have never seen it, but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built and it is terrific.” I can only imagine Freeman needed a new home – or more likely a kitchen remodeling – for there’s no other reason for him to have taken this part, and he all but sleepwalks his way through it. He plays Damon, an ex-cop now confined to a wheelchair, from which he runs a crime empire. His career, Victoria (Rose), is an ex-soldier who needs help with the medical expenses of her little daughter. She agrees to carry out a series of collections for him, over the course of one night. 

There are so many red flags here, not least his threatening her daughter, a pointless bit of leverage. Then the first collection brings her face-to-face with the man who killed her brother. Really, what are the odds? Any normal person might go, “Hang on a moment…”, consider the possibility Damon might just have a hidden agenda, and turn their mad skills on him. But we need the movie to happen, and so Victoria ploughs on, through a series of non-escalating and largely uninteresting confrontations. She has cameras strapped to her, so Damon can follow her actions, and yell marginally helpful advice at sporadic intervals. It’s less than 15 minutes before the end, that any genuine sense of free will appears for the heroine.

I will say, it is framed and shot in a competent manner, with some nice use of colour palette. Otherwise, though, this is startlingly uninteresting. It is not, of course, the worst film I’ve covered here, by a long shot. But this clearly wasn’t cheap. I’ve not been able to pin down a budget, but I’d say $20 million seems a minimum figure, unless the producers had compromising pictures of Freeman. Among other GWG movies with eight-figure budgets, this does definitely need to be in the conversation for worst ever, possessing almost no redeeming features. Poor Rose needs to have a word with her agent, before her career goes the route taken by Michelle Rodriguez

Dir: George Gallo
Star: Ruby Rose, Morgan Freeman, Patrick Muldoon, Nick Vallelonga

The Vengeful Beauty

  By

★★★½
“Beauty vs. the Beasts”

A court official is killed by the emperor’s minion, Jin Gang-feng (Lo), after discovering evidence linking the monarch to a recent slew of terrorist attacks involving the feared “flying guillotine”. His wife, Rong Qiu-yan (Ping), was out of the house at the time, and is forced to flee for her life. Jin knows that he can’t let the emperor know there was a survivor, and his hunt for her has to remain low-profile, so he sends his three children out after Qui-Yan. However, their target is a renowned martial artist in her own right, and is able to fend off their attacks, with the help of a student who learned under the same master,  Wang-jun (Yueh), and a former member of the flying guillotines, Ma Seng (Chu). Eventually, Jin decides that if a job’s worth doing, you need to do it yourself. Though there’s one further threat to Qiu-yan, coming from an unexpected quarter.

This all unfolds at a brisk pace over 80 minutes, with plenty of action – there’s a fight-scene about every 5-10 minutes. These are mostly pretty good, even if Chen is probably the least effective fighter on display here. Her background is more in adult fare than martial arts, and though she remains fully-dressed here, Jin’s daughter does do a bit of topless martial arts in pursuit of her target. So there’s that… The makers do a good job at disguising any shortcomings, and we also need to cut her character some slack, since she’s supposed to be several months pregnant! On that basis, any activity more energetic than sedately climbing a set of stairs should probably be admired.

Though despite the title, Qiu-yan is really not all that “vengeful”. Although she certainly kills a lot of people, they’re almost entirely dispatched in self-defense after they attack her, with Jin likely the only true qualifier in that category. The number and styles of weapons on view is impressive, each character having a favourite. Of course, the flying guillotine – which does what it sounds like it does – is a stand-out, but I also have to mention Ma’s ability with crockery, presumably a skill picked up during his time as an assassin for the emperor. I’m a bit surprised his character didn’t get a spin-off film, potentially entitled Master of the Flying Bowl Movement.

While there is at least one twist along the way, it ends up as you’d expect, with Qiu-yan facing off against the man responsible for the death of her husband. Though in another imaginative element, she has to find the right person to kill, first fighting her way through an army of doubles wearing Jin masks. This is the kind of element which sustains the film, even if the heroine’s fights are short of what the likes of Angela Mao were providing around the same time. It’s currently available on Amazon Prime in a nice, widescreen print that is definitely the way to go, and despite its age, offers a very acceptable amount of entertainment value.

Dir:  Meng Hua Ho
Star: Chen Ping, Norman Chui, Hua Yueh, Lieh Lo

Vexille

  By

★★★★
“Breaking the lockdown”

In the second half of the 21st century, Japan closed its borders, after a schism between it and the rest of the world over the development of advanced androids by robotics pioneer Daiwa Heavy Industries, which the United Nations wanted stopped. For a decade no foreigner has been allowed in, and no-one knows what the country is now like. Then evidence arises that makes government agency SWORD embark on an “off the books” mission, to insert a team into Japan. It doesn’t go well, and before long the only member left active is Lt. Cdr. Vexille Serra (Kuroki). She discovers the country is now run by Daiwa, and things are… not what you’d expect. She links up with the head of the anti-Daiwa resistance, Maria (Matsuyuki). But time is running out for them, and the rebels are forced to mount a last-ditch attack on Daiwa’s island headquarters, in the hope of preventing a similar fate befalling the rest of the world.

I was surprised to find how far back this was released, because the animation doesn’t feel 14 years old. It’s a slick combination of CGI and cel work, that looks particularly good in motion – and there’s no shortage of that. The other thing the film does well is balance the plot and the action. The central idea here, that Japan reverted to the state of sakoku, which isolated the country from 1639 to 1853, is intriguing – if a bit implausible – and the story delivers a few unexpected twists on its heels. However, it never topples over into grinding philosophical discussions about the meaning of life, what it means to be “human”, etc. and so is a marked improvement over some anime shows about androids [certain Ghost in the Shell incarnations, but I am particularly looking at you, Mardock Scramble!]

Instead, it uses the scenario as a jumping-off point for a number of wonderful set pieces. Firstly, an initial assault on a Colorado mansion which reveals the evidence of Japanese activity, and ends in a giant fireball to rival all giant fireballs. Then there’s a chase through a docks, between a super-powered motorbike and several mecha suits. And finally, there’s a long, extended attempt to get into Daiwa’s headquarters. This involves a full-speed race through service tunnels connecting it to the mainland, while pursued by “jags” – rogue nanotechnology, whose form and behaviour are not dissimilar to the sandworms from Dune. It is all great stuff, and the soundtrack, produced by trance DJ legend Paul Oakenfold, helps drive things forward.

Vexille and Maria are definitely the two main characters, so there’s no doubt that it deserves to be included on the site, and they have rather more success getting into Daiwa than the male members of the resistance. There’s no much background on the heroine; she has a relationship with another member of the team, its commander Leon Fayden (Tanihara), and his capture by Daiwa is about all the motivation provided. Or necessary, to be fair. Providing you aren’t looking for something deep and meaningful, but enjoy a good high concept, and watching things whizz past at a high rate of speed, this is a solid success as a slick piece of entertainment.

Dir: Fumihiko Sori
Star: Meisa Kuroki, Yasuko Matsuyuki, Shosuke Tanihara, Takaya Kuroda