Hai kikku gâru!

Greetings And Salutations, and welcome to my review of High Kick Girl; here's the breakdown of my ratings:

Story: 0.25 Direction: 1.00 Pace: 1.00 Acting: 0.75 Enjoyment: 1.25

TOTAL: 4.25 out of 10.00

I know most Martial Art Movie fans don't watch the films for their stunningly complex and engaging storylines, but at least a smidgen of a story is requisite to tie in the kick-ass action sequences.

Regrettably, it appears the writers were out to lunch and knocked this garbage out in their lunch hour, with time left to put away a seven-course dinner. It's a basic story of an impatient know-it-all girl who is too selfish to train for her Karate black belt. Her petulance leads her to join a gang - The Destroyers - whose ulterior motive is to defeat her master by using her as bait. Had the writers only chosen to scoff a burger and fries, they would have found time to strengthen the plot and the characters. And it's this that is the major letdown.

Another is the direction. Now here's the thing, the director had the marvellous notion to reshow the fights in slow-motion. It would have worked wonderfully had he employed it sparingly for all the "Ouch" hits like the laughing insane fighter who takes a blow to the head, and we watch it snap back and bounce off the wooden wall behind him. It looks realistic and painful, and it appears worse in slow-motion. Lamentably, the director uses this gimmick with every fight sequence, which results in the transformation from engaging into tedious. And that is a shame because, other than this, he's a good director. He has a fine sense of style and composition; there are some handsomely framed scenes. I especially liked the stand off's and the panoramic fights.

But we head back into terribleness when we get to the cast. Most of whom don't need to speak; just stand still and look tough and malicious. Sadly most look bored and more bored. And the ones who do speak are hit and miss. These gals and guys were chosen for their skills in the Martial Arts arena and not for being thespians, even amateur ones. The worst of these is Master Matsumara. Granted, Tatsuya Naka can fight, but he is stoic to the point of extremity. No emotion ever passes across his face - even when he gets punched in his mug, nothing changes.

If it weren't for the fights and their choreography, High Kick Girl would be 1-2-Miss. However, the fight sequences are pretty great, and most look realistic. The battle between High Kick Girl and the Strong School Girl is superb. Both have excellent styles and skills, which they demonstrate superbly in the fight.

Therefore I recommend this to the die-hard Martial Arts fans, but only for the fight scenes - you can fast-forward through the rest.

Please feel free to visit my The Game Is Afoot and Holding Out For A Hero lists to see where I ranked High Kick Girl.

Take Care & Stay Well.

I must admit I really enjoyed watching the movie.

I really like the fight sequences done in the film. Without knowing anything but what I see, it feels like a group of people who knew Karate got together and made a cheap karate film. I can't help but to find that cool. If I knew Karate, and knew a butch of other people that knew Karate, I would get my camera and do the same thing.

It was the good type of cheesy. Sure, these guys need to learn how to do some fight choreography to make the fights more fluid, and to make the blows more realistic (A good sound guy could have help with that as well), but when it comes to Marshal arts films, I got to give these guys and A for effort. It was pure enjoyment.

The story was so weak it does not need to be mentioned and I did not get the need to repeat fight scenes in slow motion, which showed us how accurate the technique is, but show us how fake the contact was, but overall it was cool that things like this get made.

The greatest cinematic invention is this: A cute schoolgirl in a short skirt kicking butt. Yep, I'm a sucker for movies like this. All I ask is that there be plentiful exhibitions of well-choreographed buttkicking by cute schoolgirls. "High Kick Girl" provides a lot of this for the opening 50 minutes or so, but then takes a turn for the worse.

There are a number of positives to this film. First of all, there is a ton of fighting here. I didn't actually time the length of the action sequences, but it felt like they occupied more than half of the total running time. This is a good thing. Secondly, the martial arts choreography is 100% realistic. Not one move required the use of wires, and most of the actors gave an impressive exhibition. Thirdly, the lead actress has an intimidating, arrogant persona and it's fun watching her taunt and humiliate her opponents. Fourthly, there are a handful of cute schoolgirl baddies that the protagonist battles with. Fifthly, the camera-work uses a lot of wide shots so that the viewer can see everything clearly. There are also some fairly long sequences without cuts or editing gimmicks.

Unfortunately, there are a number of negatives to this film as well. The biggest problem is the rampant, undisciplined use of slow motion replays. The viewer is shown a strike at regular speed, followed by a replay of that same strike in slow motion. At first this was useful because some karate strikes are somewhat deceptive and fast, but as the film went on the slow motion just killed the fluidity of the action all together for two reasons. First, slow motion replays were shown for very basic strikes (e.g., a straight kick to the gut), which is worthless. Second, the final confrontation uses sequences that are first shown in slow motion, then replayed in SUPER slow motion. This was a major miscalculation on the part of the filmmakers because the scene just drags and drags into mind-numbing boredom. It felt like they were just padding the running time to break 80 minutes. Not good.

Another problem is Rina Takeda's inexplicable turn from intimidating buttkicker to worthless wimp during the middle section. She pummels a whole school of big dudes at the beginning of the film, then goes into a shell and plays victim/hostage for most of the second half. In addition, she was fairly inactive during the finale and only took down one baddie in a not-so-awesome fight. (Tatsuya Naka takes over from there and looks impressive though.) One other thing that bothered me was that this film introduces a really cool, acrobatic schoolgirl villain near the midpoint, only to then completely forget about her for the rest of the movie. This was another terrible decision by the filmmakers that made the final fight even more disappointing because the viewer will automatically expect a throwdown between Takeda and the antagonist schoolgirl. It never happens.

I disagree with anyone who claims that "High Kick Girl" is better than either one of JeeJa Yanin's films ("Chocolate" and "Raging Phoenix"). Yes, Takeda was very impressive and is a talent to look out for if she decides to do more movies, but I suspect that martial arts "purity" will be the only true reason for someone to prefer "High Kick Girl." There's more to action movies than "purity" though, and JeeJa Yanin's flicks have finale's that blow "High Kick Girl" out of the water irregardless of whether or not wires are used. In addition, the storyline to "High Kick Girl" is just as limp (if not more so) than JeeJa's movies, so there's no advantage there either. I guess the reader will just have to watch them all and make up their own mind.

I would still recommend "High Kick Girl" despite its flaws. There's more than enough fun to make it worthwhile.

This is a very low budget film that is flawed in many ways; however has some redeeming properties. For the non-martial arts practitioner this may not be enjoyable. For a martial artists, or martial arts fan there is actually some very good karate techniques and fight scenes in this movie. It also has some great looks at Karate training and Kata/Forms training. The story is original and the actors do an adequate job considering the budget and scale of the film. The biggest defect is the lack of engagement of the well executed techniques in most of the fight scenes. There are numbers of scenes which are direct trade-offs and copies of Tarantino's Phenomenally exciting "Kill Bill 1&2". I do respect the film makers' attempts here and I respect the martial artist more. I wouldn't go out our my way to recommend this one but I would catch it if I was looking for something off the beaten path.

My quick rating - 3,6/10. I honestly have no idea if this was an infomercial for a local Karate studio or a home movie. The way the movie focuses on the young girl who is the star is so obsessive it has to be the daughter of someone. But the annoying camera work that consists of more replays of moves than even the WWE packs into their programming makes you wonder what the point really is. And this isn't just a replay from earlier in the flick, this is the exact same move or moves shown a frame or two earlier throughout the WHOLE movie. I have to say that if all the replays were left out, instead of 85 minutes, the flick would've clocked in around 70 minutes. I would go into the plot, but there wasn't one. Basically high school girl kicks butt. Yep, that is it. Back to the infomercial possibility, I suppose this movie could be recruiting for someone and spreading the message of how disciplined martial arts are and great for kids (which is true, btw) but this film does a poor job conveying it. With all the great martial arts flicks out there this is a definite pass up on film.