Zero Woman: Saigo no shirei

That was my reaction when the closing credits of "Zero Woman Returns" started rolling. Given that this was the last "Zero Woman" film made until 2004, there is the strong possibility that the filmmakers wanted to finish off the series but leave a window open for future installments as well, so they made a series of false endings and then a baffling real one.

This time, Rei's mission is to go undercover and find out more about the president of a company who may be involved in illegal smuggling and selling of confiscated goods, using his legitimate business as a front. The man is quite impressed by Rei, and hires her as his assistant. But his ambitious plans will soon get out of hand....

Rei is played this time by Saori Ono, and like all the actresses before her, she brings something of her own to the role: a sense of playfulness and humor (before things get dark, that is). She also gets into a couple of tight spots, and has to use her quick thinking & reflexes to get out of them. The film is better-paced than most (if not all) of its predecessors, and has some memorable bloody bits; even the story is engaging for a while, before it turns into a mess at the end. Which brings me back to where I started, and to the reason I can't give this anything more than ** out of 4 stars.

Maybe there are some that think that Zero Woman will always be a zero, but this movie will disappoint many and was a thrill to me.

They always change the main character. This time it was Saori Ono, by far the most beautiful of the Zero Woman, and with the help of the scriptwriter, the most literate.

This movie has nudity, sex, and violence, but not to the level of the other ones I have seen. That will disappoint those strictly looking for sexplotation.

There was actually a romantic element to this one, as Zero Woman falls for the criminal (Shigemitsu Ogi), who was himself an ex-Zero assassin.

I enjoyed the performances of both main characters and feel that this movie deserves more than most would give it.

When a man by the name of "Kayama" (Shigemitsu Ogi) is suspected of being in charge of a smuggling operation, "Rei" (Saori Ono) is ordered to get close to him while her superiors gather enough evidence to form a course of action. In the process of doing that Rei encounters a jealous secretary and an unscrupulous associate of Kayama who wants Rei in the worst possible way. Along with that she still has other assignments she has to execute as well. Now as far as this film is concerned I will just say that--although it wasn't the best addition to the "Zero Woman" series-it wasn't exactly the worst either. Saori Ono performed creditably as the lead actress and the plot consisted of enough intrigue to keep things interesting. Likewise, not including any deviant sex scenes certainly didn't hurt either. One thing I didn't care for was the ending which left much to the imagination due to its ambiguous nature. Since there are a couple of films in the series after this one then I suppose everything will be cleared up in the next one. In any case, I thought that this was an okay film for the most part and I have rated it accordingly. Average.