The Violence Action (2022)

The Violence Action (2022)
Orginal Title: バイオレンスアクション
Translation: Violent Action

 

Starring: Kanna Hashimoto, Yôsuke Sugino, Fumika Baba, Win Morisaki, Oji Suzuka, Shunsuke Daitô, Yûri Ota, Jirô Satô, Yu Shirota, Katsunori Takahashi, Takashi Okamura
Director: Tôichirô Rutô
Action Director: n/a

 

The Violence Action is an adaptation of a relatively recent manga by Renji Asai (“The Boy and the Beast”) and Shina Sawada. Knowing its manga origins will go a long way to explain some of the film’s “interesting” visual tics, especially during the action sequences. It also goes a certain way toward explaining the way the whole modern argument of “how can such a petite girl take down guys so much bigger than her.” Not to mention the color scheme. And the film’s distorted sense of reality. And, well, everything else in it.

Kei Kikuno (Kanna Hashimoto, of Kingdom and Sailor Suit and Machine Gun: Graduation) is a diminutive—I don’t think she tops five feet—and super kawaii college-age Japanese girl. She currently studies bookkeeping (or accounting?) in college and has an after school job to make ends meet. That job purports to be an escort service—in the way that is so Japanese, it’s called a “Natural and Supple Delivery Service”—but is actually a front for killer-for-hire service. In the first scene, we see Kei storming the room of a love motel to rescue a kidnapped Internet influencer from a gang of sleazebags, all of whom she murders without breaking a sweat.

What we learn about Kei’s job is that she has an assistant-cum-getaway driver named Zura (Takashi Okamura, best known around these parts for No Problem 2 with Yuen Biao). His defining trait, besides being a bit of a goof, is that he covers up his balding head with an armor-plated Elvis-pompadour helmet-wig. Yeah, you read that right. Their base of operations is small ramen shop run by a lady named Tencho (Fumiko Baba, of the “Kamen Rider Drive” series). The running joke is that the ramen house is for “club membership only,” and that Tencho is an awful cook.

Kei’s next mission will be the driving force of the plot, but let’s get a bit of background. The Denma-Gumi Clan of Yakuza is about to go through some rough times. The current head, Sandaime (prolific actor Jiro Sato, of Yakuza-Busting Girls: Final Death-Ride Battle), is about to be incarcerated for the usual racketeering rigmarole associated with organized crime. So, someone has to lead the family while he’s serving the time. The two most experienced men in the Clan are Kenitsu and Kinoshita (Katsunori Takahashi, of Ring and Beyond Outrage). Instead of waiting to see who wins on merit, Kinoshita contacts Kei’s employer to carry out a hit on Kenitsu and his men.

Although the job is successful, news reaches Sandaime that a cute, pink-haired hitgirl killed one of his top lieutenants. Not knowing that his other lieutenant had put her to it, he sends his top assassin, Michitaka-kun (Yu Shirota, of Ajin: Demi Human and New Interpretation Records of the Three Kingdoms), to find and eliminate her. Moreover, the Denma-Gumi bookkeeper, Terano (Yosuke Sugino, of the Tokyo Revengers films), has discovered that Kinoshita has been embezzling money from the organization and hiding it in a secret account. That makes him a target for assassination by Kinoshita, who injures Terano’s friend and bodyguard, Kura (Kenta Izuma), in an attempted assassination. Kei met Terano by chance on the bus some days before and became infatuated with him, but will ultimately be called upon to knock him off the box when he absconds with the clan’s money…

The plot is actually fairly involved, with the different factions of the Yakuza clan fighting for supremacy or trying to eliminate Kei, who’s a disinterested outlier in the whole conflict. There are a handful of subplots included to flesh out the movie to an unnecessarily 111-minute run time. The most important is the nascent puppy love between Kei and Terano. In another one, one of Kei’s associates, Daria (Yuri Ota, of the “Silent Voice” live-action mini-series), wants to get revenge on Kinoshita’s top enforcer. We might also include the unflappable efforts of Michitaka-kun to kill Kei. Finally, early on, Kei’s employer hires a classmate of Kei’s, Watanabe (Oji Suzuka), who carries a torch for Kei. The whole Watanabe subplot mainly exists to give comic foil Zura someone to play off of. Only the Daria subplot feels underdeveloped and (ultimately) predictable in how it will resolve itself.

The Violence Action is very much a quirky movie. I mean, the main heroine is a nigh-unstoppable killing machine who looks like the lead protagonist from the kid’s show “Lazytown,” and is probably just as tall. One of the main villains is an equally-deadly killing machine who dresses in white coveralls and wields a nail gun. There’s Yakuza head who’s defining characteristic is that he loves making stupid dad jokes. Plus, there are moments in the action when Kei moves like The Flash, which pushes the film further from any sort of reality into the realm of live-action cartoon, albeit never reaching City Hunter territory.

I wasn’t able to find the name of the action director on the IMDB credits, nor does the film even have an entry at the JFDB (Japanese Film Database), so I’m not sure who staged the action. It is the expected mix of gunplay, hand-to-hand combat and knife fighting that you expect from most action movies these days. I find it fascinating just how much knife-fighting has become an integral part of action cinema. Back in the day, you might occasionally have sloppily-staged knife fight, or Arnold Schwarzenegger hurling a knife that may actually be a small sword at an attacker, but I get the feeling that more and more martial artists who venture into stuntwork practice more than the usual Shotokan or tae kwon do and incorporate styles like krava maga, escrima and silat into their repertoires, not to mention those who probably study under former Special Forces operatives. When it comes to movies about spies, mercenaries, professional assassins, etc., it almost feels standard for there to be some slick knife fighting on display. The Violence Action is no exception.

The gunplay feels inspired by the works of John Woo and Stephen Tung Wai, but taken to the nth degree. There are lots of “impossible gun tricks,” or, in other words, Kanna Hashimoto firing a pistol while engaged in all manner of wire-assisted acrobatics. That said, these over-the-top gun-fu antics are less about the complex choreography of the shootout as a whole and is treated more like a collage of Hashimoto using a firearm in different airborne positions. I don’t care how unrealistic those stunts are—nor do I care about how much that pistol would snap Kanna’s wrist if she were to fire it one-handed—but I do hope for steak in my bullet ballets and not just the sizzle of some crazy poses to be shooting a gun from.

The hand-to-hand combat is competently staged. Hashimoto does all sorts of joint locks, twists and throws, in addition to the occasional spin kick and wire-assisted aerial boot. She often jumps off the wall to perform a jumping spin kick. As the number of “girl-boss action flix” has increased over the past decade, so has the corresponding rhetoric among male viewers of “no way could a girl that size take on all these men all by herself.” I’m sure that HK cinephiles worry less about that, having grown up on a steady diet of Angela Mao, Polly Shang-Kuan, Michelle Yeoh, Moon Lee and Yukari Oshima. In any case, Hashimoto is so small, even compared to ScarJo, Jessica Chastain, and Karen Gillan, that watching her fight anyone will require massive suspension of disbelief. I’m willing to grant her that suspension to a degree, but not all viewers will. But then again, this is based on manga, so reality is a more of a suggestion than something to be followed.

I think you can have some fun with The Violence Action. Kanna Hashimoto is not hawt, but she is kawaii and sometimes fun to watch. Much of the humor is too goofy to be truly fun, but the film never feels exactly slow. The action is hit or miss, but those of us who like butt-kicking women can enjoy a single viewing of it.