'Baby Assassins' - Movie Review

Chisato (Akari Takaishi) and Mahiro (Saori Izawa) are teenage assassins whose employers make them live together and try to get part time jobs. They don't get along very well, and neither of them is particularly good at holding down a job of any description. Imagine a Japanese John-Wick-style (less action, more comedy) coming of age tale.

I initially had some trouble separating Chisato from Himari (Mone Akitani) when the latter was introduced as the daughter of a Yakuza leader - the only thing I can think of to excuse myself for this is that I was busy watching the subs and not giving the visuals all of my attention. The plot also bounced around in time a little, which didn't help.

The dynamic between our two central sociopaths is pretty entertaining, and their attempts to negotiate daily life are sometimes very funny.

The final fight (mostly between Masanori Mimoto and Saori Izawa) deserves mention. It owes some credit to "John Wick" for the basics of "Gun Fu," but it's more than that. The choreography is outstanding. The actors must have rehearsed for weeks - particularly to make it look as natural, sloppy, fast, and vicious as it does. When I say "sloppy," I mean the inaccuracy of someone fighting for their life - not martial-arts-movie-fighting sloppiness, when they miss strikes by half a meter and expect us to read it as a hit. There's none of that kind of sloppiness here. This is visceral and brutal, and reads as more real than 95% of martial arts fights committed to film.

And then ... we get back to comedic violence, and then comedy.