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Machine Girl, The
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| Year: |
2008
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Director: |
Noboru Iguchi
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| Stars: |
Minase Yashiro, Asami, Ryosuke Kawamura, Kentaro Kishi, Ryoji Okamoto, Kentaro Shimazu, Taro Suwa, Honoka, Nobohiro Nishihara, Sho Kimura, Yuya Ishikawa
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| Genre: |
Horror, Comedy, Action, Science Fiction, Weirdo |
| Rating: |
  5 (from 2 votes) |
| Review: |
Cult movies from the Far East were once something you stumbled onto by happy accident. Now they have to be made to order. The insanely gory Machine Girl was co-produced by Nikkatsu Studios and American DVD distributors Tokyo Shock, who enjoyed great success unleashing Takashi Miike and Ryuhei Kitamura movies upon a worldwide audience. Now it seems Japan has moved away from that kind of extreme cinema (even Miike makes kids’ movies), hence Machine Girl was seemingly engineered to be the sickest, craziest, bloodiest, most over-the-top action spectacle likely to appeal to Tokyo Shock’s core fanbase.
A gang of bullies are playing a lethal game of William Tell with a terrified teenager, when bionic schoolgirl Ami Hyuga (swimsuit model Minase Yashiro) leaps in to save the day and blows them away with her machinegun arm. Far from grateful, the victim scurries away screaming: “Murderer!” We flashback to when Ami was a carefree, basketball-loving high school kid. A tough cookie, sworn to protect her little brother Yu (Ryosuke Kawamura), ever since their parents committed suicide after being wrongly accused of murder. However, Yu and his friend Takashi fall in with a bad crowd, and wind up owing money to teenage gangster Sho Kimura (Nobohiro Nishihara), scion of the infamous Hattori Hanzo ninja clan (mentioned in countless Japanese action movies and Kill Bill (2003)).
When the yakuza boys murder Yu and his friend, a vengeful Ami confronts their parents but winds up having her left arm tempura battered, deep fried (!) and sliced off. She survives and seeks shelter with Takashi’s yummy mummy, Miki (Asami - looking barely old enough to drive, let alone have a teenage son), whose inventor husband Sugura (Yuya Ishikawa) whips up the machinegun arm. These two, grief-stricken, street tough chicks team up to wreak bloody vengeance upon husband and wife clan leaders Ryuji (Kentaro Shimazu) and Violet Kimura (Honoka), in an orgy of limb lopping, head exploding, intestine spilling, splatter violence.
Gore fans aren’t likely to go away feeling short-changed. This rivals Braindead (1992) and Ichi the Killer (2001) for gleefully drenching the screen in blood. Minase Yashiro and Asami deliver charismatic performances, handling both the drama and action sequences quite admirably. Their feisty female bonding recalls Toei’s delinquent schoolgirl movies from the 1970s, but the self-consciously campy tone errs a little to close to Troma fare for comfort. As with Troma movies, writer-director Noboru Iguchi fails to heed John Waters' dictum that there is such a thing as “good” bad taste and “bad” bad taste. Seeing Ami squeeze a young bullies’ corpse to spray his evil father with blood is sick fun. Watching yakuza prepare to rape the corpse of her best friend is not. Iguchi - who made the similarly twisted Sukeban Boy (2006) and has varied career as an actor and cinematographer - ensures the anime-influenced action scenes are suitably outrageous and fun. Watch for the red jumpsuit-clad ninja squad who get blasted down to their skeletons. However, he fritters subplots away - including the murder accusations surrounding Ami’s parents and the killing of her best friend (which she never even learns about) - and opts for an ambiguous ending in a blatant bid for a sequel.
Iguchi tips his hat to 1970s grindhouse cinema, right from the comic book freeze-frame opening credits. Yet the best of those movies carried food for thought. Machine Girl flirts with a “violence begets violence” theme, that proves hard to take seriously when Miki enthuses: “If there’s a way to get revenge by not killing people, I’d like to know it. It’s kill, kill, kill!” A surprise twist has the dead bullies’ grieving parents side with Ryuji and become a team of Power Ranger type cyber-warriors called The Super-Mourner Gang. Each parent dies apologising to their dead child for not protecting them. A potentially interesting angle thrown away as another sick joke.
Like a few too many Japanese cult movies this has a sneaking admiration for its smug, sadistic yakuza villains, but tempers things with the hot-blooded heroism of the female leads. The Kimura family prove hissable villains, whom we long to see dealt their comeuppance. Kentaro Shimazu overplays rather broadly, but super-sexy Honoka is ice-cool malevolence as cruel Violet. Amidst the wild finale, where the impressively athletic Yashiro and Asami cut loose with karate kicks and chainsaws, the moment Honoka unveils her bionic drill-bra is a campy highlight.
Click here for the trailer
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| Reviewer: |
Andrew Pragasam
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