Sêrâ-fuku to kikanjû

A great title and a great poster, and a movie that's overall pretty good. Sailor Suit and Machine Gun is definitely a strange and flawed film, but there's a lot to like, and watching the 132-minute cut, I feel like there were only a small number of places where it dragged a little.

This movie's about a teenage girl who gets made the head of a yakuza gang. Tonally, it's a little quirky in parts, but I don't knowing I could call it a comedy (you'd expect a movie with this premise to be one), and there are certainly some disturbing sequences in here, too, which make things feel very serious at times.

The abundance of long takes is also interesting. One near the end breaks the reality/logic of the film in a way that confused me, but most of them work well and are overall impressive to see play out.

What a shame. The only good thing about this deservedly obscure cheapie is the idea. To work properly, a comic caper like this one needs plenty of action, well-measured pace, strategic shots of comedy, and at least some sympathy for the characters. Above all, timing is critical. Perhaps the biggest flaw is the timing is simply not good enough. There are long introspective segments which do not add to the story, separating the too-few action sequences. When the fighting starts, it usually does not make a lot of sense, and jarrs rather than thrills. There is some character-based comedy, but the film is so poorly pieced together that the pathetic gangsters rarely raise a chuckle.

The direction is sloppy at best. The script needs work. The pacing is completely off. And the actors are, frankly, not very good.

A sad misfire.

With a title like Sailor uniform and machine gun I thought this would be a cheesy but funny action flick from 80s Japan. Instead this movie is really boring and the pacing isn't very good. The only good thing I enjoyed was seeing the 80s Japan scenery.

I finished feeling disappointed.

Based on a novel by Jiro Akagawa that was published by Kadokawa publishing company, "Sera fuku to kikanjyu" (sailor uniform and machine gun) was also Kadokawa's (and then president Haruki Kadokawa's) first attempt at movie targeted for teens and young adults featuring also a teenager in the starring role.

Izumi Hoshi (Hiroko Yakushimaru) is a normal high school student, until one day a horde of yazuka shows up at the gate of her school. Unbeknownst to her, her father was the head of a "Medaka Gumi" yakuza clan. His passing away prompted the soldiers to fetch her to become the next "kumicho" or the head of the clan. Pror to passing away, her father smuggled a heroin, and that becomes the focus of rivaling yakuza clans to take possession. When one of her soldiers gets killed, Izumi reluctantly takes charge and starts to lead her troops to face the opposing yakuza clan - the only problem is Madaka Gumi only has four yakuza soldiers where the other clans have many more.

Hiroko Yakushimaru shows her brilliant intelligence to lead the group of adults much older than her. The story seem to lack focus as different characters comes and goes, but the real focus is where's the heroin, and who hid it ? Everyone is running after the heroin and much killing goes on to find it. This all sound's serious, but it's all done in light hearted fashion (how a killing can be light, you have to see this film) to appeal to the target audiences. Towards the end, Izumi while wearing her sailor suit school uniform takes a machine gun and goes into Futoccho's (Rentaro Mikuni) office to settle the score and fires the machine gun in his office, exclaiming "Kaikan" (Feel's good) which was one of the defining moments in Japanese cinema at the time.

Hiroko Yakushimaru goes on to becoming a successful movie and TV actor and is still active today.

Humorous satire of Japanese yakuza flicks in which Hiroko Yakushimaru plays the daughter of a yakuza oyabun (boss) who dies and leaves the clan to her. Unfortunately, the clan is not exactly top flight, as they drive around in old, backfiring cars, one member is, well, a little effeminate, and veteran actor Ken Takakura (Black Rain, Mr. Baseball are his two most recent American flicks) tries his best to keep Hiroko out of trouble. The scene with Hiroko when she sprays a room with machine gun fire and then exclaims "Kaikan"!! (roughly translated as "exciting" but perhaps in a physical sense) became somewhat famous in Japan at the time with people using the phrase in the same tone of voice as Hiroko. A funny and entertaining movie that I would definitely recommend to anyone who can understand Japanese (alas, there is no subtitled version).