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Magnolia Entertainment has done a fine job lately of bring over some very cool Asian cinema to both theatres and DVD lately. With releases like The Host and Tears of the Black Tiger we get some highly entertaining looks at other cultures, all wrapped up in very good films. The Host was a terrific look at Korea and Tears of the Black Tiger gave a great look at Thailand, and now Magnolia is back with a look at Japanese school culture, but in a very over-the-top way with Yo-Yo Girl Cop.
It’s the present day in the Shibuya district of Tokyo, and a young school girl is running about frantically with a bomb strapped to her chest, trying to get clear of the crowd of people- and then the bomb goes off! We learn that she was a special police operative who’s mission was to look into a website called Enola Gay, that’s counting down to something mysterious. The site is a resource for students without hope, and that leads the police to want to place a special operative within the school to find out more. There’s only 72 hours left to the countdown, and desperate measure force the “recruitment” of a new operative, a young girl named K, who’s been deported from New York is given the option of either serving the force or not having any hope of seeing her mother again. She takes on the name of Asamiya Saki and begins her job of uncovering the secret behind the Enola Gay site, with her only weapon being a deadly steel yo-yo…
Now I’m not that familiar with this, but apparently Yo-Yo Girl Cop has some heavy duty history and this is the first the character has been seen in 20 years. The DVD package touts this as from the creator of Battle Royale which is also heavily vested in Japanese school culture. To an American audience, watching this and taking it literally will no doubt have you thinking that Japanese schools are Columbines just waiting to happen, but yet to me this is all played very, very broad, very tongue-in-cheek, almost like this wild adolescent anime come to life. I really had no problems following it at all, but at the same time, again for a Western audience, you’ll no doubt see moments in this film where it just looks like logic has flown out the window.
The action is pretty decent in the film and it even takes it upon itself to make fun of itself in a few places (basically moments when Asamiya Saki is getting ready to go into action with her yo-yo), but once it gets to it’s end, it goes fairly balls out, and again, I thought very entertaining to watch.
Aya Matsuura is the young actress who plays Asamiya Saki, and again, near as I can tell, she’s a Japanese singing star who’s making her acting debut with this film. Well, she certainly does commit to the part and definitely brings an earnestness to it.
It’s a good-looking disc, in anamorphic widescreen with a 1:1.85 ratio and it features 5.1 and 2.0 surround sound in both Japanese and an English dub. I watched this with the English dub, and overall it’s pretty good, though the original Japanese will give you the natural voices of all of the characters. Usually movies like this I think are worth watching both ways.
This includes a Making Of featurette, that’s right in line with what Magnolia did for Tears of the Black Tiger. What this is is a subtitled TV special made in Japan about the film, and it features some nice behind the scenes footage, as well as some background on the various actors and actresses in the film. And of course, it’s very cool to see a Japanese television show like this, just to get a tast of the culture.
While I really enjoyed this, I can’t necessarily give it a good recommendation for a wide audience, but then I don’t think that’s who it’s for either. This one’s for fans of Japanese films, anime and manga and for those that like to see a little something different. It brings to mind for me other Japanese films like Takashi Miike’s Fudoh (though Fudoh is a way more extreme piece of work and definitely more for an audience that knows Miike’s films) and Suicide Club, a film with a similar premise at it’s core, but much, much more serious in it’s execution. While this doesn’t carry the same impact as either of those two, still I thought it was fun to watch.
The year is 1855 and the location is Thailand. Thailand has just entered into a treaty that brings them into the forefront of world trade. But farmers can’t keep up the production with their normal resources, so they need more buffalo brought into pull their plows. Buffalo traders are happy to oblige, but they’re being pursued by mysterious warrior who combines his martial arts skill with a use of rockets and explosives- and he’s out for revenge, looking for a trader who killed his mother and father. All the while, progress is making it’s way through, and one slick character known as both Lord Sirokorn and Lord Waeng (I’m gonna refer to him as Lord Waeng) is trying to sell tractors at an exorbitant price. Well, no one is buying, so Lord Waeng enlists a group of outlaws to start to steel all of the buffalo and force the farmers to buy from Lord Waeng. And eventually, all forces involved come together for a huge showdown…
And that’s the basic premise of Dynamite Warrior a highly, highly entertaining Thai film (my second Thai film this year, my first being the equally entertaining Tears of the Black Tiger) that pushes itself as “from the makers of Ong-Bak” and that may be true, but thematically, this owes way more to Stephen Chow and his movies Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle than anything else. While this might have it’s historical significance (and it certainly looks like it’s been taken very seriously as far as the visual look and the lifestyle portrayals), believe me, the movie itself plays as more a giant cartoon than anything else, and really I wouldn’t have it any other way. I think trying to treat this seriously would’ve resulted in a stuffier film, nowhere near as fun as this is.
I’ve read other reviews online that have talked about the acting here as being very bad, and then y’know I just think they’re missing the point of the film- I think it is supposed to be as broad as it is, Dan Chupong who plays the Dynamite Warrior in question is typically stoic and he plays the hero well, but it’s the rest of the cast that makes this fun, at least from a character standpoint, in particular with the actor who play Lord Waeng. But Chupong excels with the stunt work, and really that’s what everyone is here to see, and you’ll see some nice stuff and some pretty original stuff too, especially when combined with the rocket attacks.
Dynamite Warrior is presented in an anamorphic widescreen format and available in 5.1 sound in both Thai and English dubs. This also includes a couple of extras around the making of the film and the stunts, and they’re subtitled featurettes, figuring that they’ve been created for their native land and then translated for domestic release.
Like I said, I just thought this was a lot of fun to watch, and it certainly gets points with me with it’s milieu as well, this isn’t a period I know a lot about and while I wouldn’t say this is at all a totally historical piece, it is showing me something on screen that I’m not used to seeing. Have fun with this one.
Thirty years ago today, a film opened to forty theaters. That film went on to pave the way for Science Fiction and Fantasy, and break new ground in the technology of film making. At it’s basis was the story of a farm boy who discovers within himself the power to bring down an oppressive evil empire. That film was Star Wars.
On May 28th, The History Channel is premiering a documentary that serves to examine just why Star Wars has become the cultural icon that it has. Through interviews with numerous historians, scholars of mythology and literature, film makers, and pop culture icons, this film examines the broad themes, characters and stories that make up the Star Wars saga. Footage of the films sits along side works of mythology, earlier works of film, historical footage, and commentary to postulate on just where George Lucas may have gotten his ideas and creative sparks when producing the films.
I have had the opportunity to review this documentary. We also discuss the documentary in more depth in the upcoming Episode #37 (to be posted May 25th or May 26th as time for editing allows.)
I think that anyone with even a passing interest in the Star Wars saga will enjoy how the content of the films are framed against literature, mythology, the history, politics, and personal experience. It’s not often that you have people like Tom Brokaw, Newt Gingrich, Kevin Smith, Stephen Colbert, Nancy Pelosi, Joss Whedon and Peter Jackson all come together with historians and scholars to discuss a couple of Sci-Fi films.
This documentary is highly recommended by both Tonys.
