I have to admit, I was disappointed. It's pretty hard to go into films like these without pretty low expectations of the splatstick stuff you're going to be exposed to, but this came off like a cheap Suicide Club with imitations of Silence of the Lambs. Well, again, that sounds a lot more exciting than this movie was. Basically, the problem is you watch this movie to see a girl kick butt with a yoyo, and you get maybe ten minutes of that with a whole lot of random other stuff getting in the way.
Not to argue with the writing. The dialog is pretty terrible, but actually the plot isn't half-bad if someone would have taken through a few more drafts and maybe even tried to make it either more serious or more silly than it is. Instead, it tries a little too hard to be both, and through Kenta Fukasaku's poor control of tone, ends up failing at both. Kenta has an eye for digital effects and making every edit seem like an exclamation mark, but he doesn't know when to sit back and let the story tell itself. At least not in this movie, it seems like the arena is open for him to do better elsewhere.
So basically, Saki Asamiya is deported from New York City and taken back to Japan, where she's conscripted, La Femme Nikita style, into finding out what's up with this teenager suicide bomber website with a mysterious ticker. She integrates into school as only a moody teenager can, is given a yoyo to play with, and starts her investigation mostly by sneering and getting into petty arguments with classmates. Luckily, though, the classmates she despises the most are involved with the website in some random way or another, and she's able to basically use momentum to find the badguy at the end. Kinda. There are a lot of plot holes, and weird diversions involving Kira (Riki Takeuchi, the best performer in this movie and one of the best Japanese actors currently working), the policeman who recruited her. Kira also has another important relationship with Saki, which again could have been really well-done if taken more seriously but instead just came off as random and weird.
Anyway, one thing somehow leads to another, a few bombs go off, and you'll eventually get your yoyo fighting awesomeness. Actually, even during the more terrible bits, this movie is quite entertaining. It just has an ill-gotten attempt at emotional seriousness that doesn't work out for it, or it's an actually emotionally serious film that can't stay serious what with the whole yoyo fighting thing, or something. It should have been one or the other but it failed at both.
--PolarisDiB
Not to argue with the writing. The dialog is pretty terrible, but actually the plot isn't half-bad if someone would have taken through a few more drafts and maybe even tried to make it either more serious or more silly than it is. Instead, it tries a little too hard to be both, and through Kenta Fukasaku's poor control of tone, ends up failing at both. Kenta has an eye for digital effects and making every edit seem like an exclamation mark, but he doesn't know when to sit back and let the story tell itself. At least not in this movie, it seems like the arena is open for him to do better elsewhere.
So basically, Saki Asamiya is deported from New York City and taken back to Japan, where she's conscripted, La Femme Nikita style, into finding out what's up with this teenager suicide bomber website with a mysterious ticker. She integrates into school as only a moody teenager can, is given a yoyo to play with, and starts her investigation mostly by sneering and getting into petty arguments with classmates. Luckily, though, the classmates she despises the most are involved with the website in some random way or another, and she's able to basically use momentum to find the badguy at the end. Kinda. There are a lot of plot holes, and weird diversions involving Kira (Riki Takeuchi, the best performer in this movie and one of the best Japanese actors currently working), the policeman who recruited her. Kira also has another important relationship with Saki, which again could have been really well-done if taken more seriously but instead just came off as random and weird.
Anyway, one thing somehow leads to another, a few bombs go off, and you'll eventually get your yoyo fighting awesomeness. Actually, even during the more terrible bits, this movie is quite entertaining. It just has an ill-gotten attempt at emotional seriousness that doesn't work out for it, or it's an actually emotionally serious film that can't stay serious what with the whole yoyo fighting thing, or something. It should have been one or the other but it failed at both.
--PolarisDiB