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Part of a growing trend in martial arts cinema, ‘High-Kick Girl’ appeared at the tail end of the 2000s when a series of films emerged to put more emphasis back on the hard-hitting female protagonists. Designed as a vehicle to showcase the skill-set of the teenage karate extraordinaire Rina Takeda, Fuyuhiko Nishi’s take on the genre is certainly loaded with its own positives, even with a few flaws.

Living in Tokyo, feisty teenager Kei Tsuchiya (Rina Takeda) is anxious and desires her black belt in martial arts, much to the disagreement of her sensei Yoshiaki Matsumura (Tatsuya Naka) who offers to teach her more disciplined tactics instead. This patience only serves to motivate her further, branching out to pick fights with other black belts to prove her skills, set up by her friend Ryosuke (Ryuki Takahashi) to help out in her studies. Eventually, this brings her...

Directed by Ryuta Tazaki and starring Mitsuki Tanimura, Julia Nagano and Kai Shishido, Salvage Mice sure looks like a fun action flick! The exciting thing is that filmmaker Fuyuhiko Nishi is serving as the producer, stunt coordinator and action director of the film. Don't know who Nishi is? Well, he was the director of High Kick Girl!, producer of Karate Girl and martial arts choreographer of the classic karate film Black Belt. So I think it is safe to assume there will be some cool action to be found in this new film. The story involves a pair of vigilantes out to catch some art thieves. You can check out the trailer below....

Fists Of Rage

Stars: Jason Barry, “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, Russell Wong, Linda Park, Masakatsu Funaki, Joanna Pacula | Written by Larry Felix Jr. | Directed by David Worth

Former childhood friends Ray (Wong) and Gabriel (Barry) return to their old neighbourhood after spending time in prison and Iraq respectively. When Gabriel refuses to participate in Ray’s illegal fights, Ray retaliates by taking out his anger of Gabriel’s friends and family. Realising it’s either fight or die Gabriel must put the pairs old friendship aside in a bloody war to take back the streets and the neighbourhood.

Also known as Honor, Fists of Rage has taken a whopping 5 years to reach these shores! Was it worth the wait? In a word, yes! Directed by David Worth, whose name you may recognise from films such classic action movies as Kickboxer, Lady Dragon and American Tigers, the film is an old-school martial...

19-year-old karate idol and actress Rina Takeda will be starring in Seiji Chiba’s upcoming action film Kunoichi, playing a female ninja who rescues kidnapped women. This marks her third starring film role since making her debut in 2009.

Takeda took up karate at age 10 and went on to win several championships in the following years. She first caught the eye of filmmaker Fuyuhiko Nishi while he was producing the 2008 film “Shaolin Girl”, starring Kou Shibasaki. In June of that year, he contacted her via her blog and soon began training her for theatrical combat. In 2009, she starred in Nishi’s film “High Kick Girl!” In 2010, she co-starred with fellow karate expert Hina Tobimatsu in “Kg: Karate Girl”.

In the new film, Takeda will play a female ninja named Kisaragi who attempts to rescue a group of women being held captive. It’s set sometime in the Sengoku period, during a...

Why have fight fans made such a big deal about High Kick Girl star Rina Takeda? Well, you can see for yourself in the new behind the scenes reel released from Karate Girl (High Kick Girl 2) showing Takeda and her villainous rival Hina Tobimatsu - also quite young, cute and skilled - hard at work.

There's a lot to like in this video and top of the list in my book is that director Yoshikatsu Kimura is clearly more concerned with capturing a film-friendly style of fighting than was High Kick Girl director Fuyuhiko Nishi - a producer on this - who was caught up with full contact realism to the point of obsession and distraction in Rina's big screen debut. Then there's also the fact that these girls are just really, really good. Check the reel out below.

Fuyuhiko Nishi, director of High Kick Girl! and producer of its upcoming follow-up Kg (Karate Girl), is a big fan of promoting his movies through YouTube kicking demos. In the following clip, Rina Takeda and her Kg co-star/rival Hina Tobimatsu show off their high kicking skills with the help of some of their training partners.

"Kg" will be released in Japan on February 5, 2011.

Source: Kg YouTube channel...

MovieWalker has released a 43-second teaser for Kg via YouTube. I’ve fixed the aspect ratio a bit to be closer to 16:9 because the original version is a little wonky.

Not all that much has detailed information is available on this one yet other than a few vague promotional blurbs and tweets reiterating the mantra “No wires, no CG, no stunts!” and the tagline which translates roughly to “A girl’s revenge, born in Yokohama”.

It doesn’t seem like this is an actual sequel to High Kick Girl, and no one with the production seems to be suggesting that it is. It looks more like a spiritual successor with a bit more emphasis on Takeda, who was at the center of all the promotion and publicity surrounding that film only to have Tatsuya Naka showcased in the climactic battle scenes.

The only plot info available thus far has...

Well, at least it wasn’t as bad as Shaolin Girl...

Fuyuhiko Nishi has spent a good deal of his career doing everything in his power to push the martial arts action film genre in Japan, something which has been largely bereft of new talent and interest since the early 1980s. From personally introducing Thai stars Tony Jaa and Jeeja Yanin to Japanese audiences via his industry contacts to creating his own films from scratch, it’s pretty obvious the man has a passion for realistic, hard-hitting theatrical combat. Unfortunately, passion and dedication don’t always lead to a good product, and his 2009 film High Kick Girl! is yet another example of that fact.

The film was relentlessly marketed as the coming out party for “karate idol” Rina Takeda, and somewhat appropriately, she’s pretty much the only redeeming aspect of it. Takeda, 17 at the time of filming, is the...

There is an important distinction to be made with Fuyuhiko Nishi’s High Kick Girl.  As a star vehicle for Rina Takeda - the titular high kicking girl - it’s more than adequate.  If the goal is simply to serve notice that Japan has a legitimate female martial arts star on their hands, High Kick Girl does a perfectly good job.  Takeda commands the screen, she has good charisma, and - importantly - she is fearless in equal measure to her considerable martial arts skills.  This film will very likely be a coming out party for Takeda and a calling card to further work on the international market, should she so desire. And - hopefully - it should do the same for Tatsuya Naka, who starred previously in Nishi’s Black Belt and delivers a very strong turn here as Takeda’s martial arts master.  So, a better than passing grade on that front.

Killer Imports [1] is a regular feature on Film Junk where we explore foreign-language films from around the world that haven’t yet had their chance to shine. In 2007, Sean posted on Film Junk [2] about a sequel to Stephen Chow’s phenomenally successful Shaolin Soccer. The sequel would be financed and made by Japanese and only be produced by Chow (who is Chinese). The sport highlighted would be lacrosse rather than soccer. Only one comment was made. Chris thought the movie would be worth seeing for the lead actress, Kou Shibasaki. And then later in the year, Sean posted about a teaser trailer [3] for this movie, now titled, Shaolin Girl. And again only one comment was made. Mike said he would probably see it, but he was disappointed that Chow wasn’t directing. And I never gave a second thought about this movie again. Then I watched All About Women, which I reviewed.