Karatê Girl

Don't expect complex plot in this one. It's about a high school brown belt karate student who's unusually strong, and goes about beating up black belts in college, and delinquents in other high schools.

The movie is one continuous stream of karate action from one scene to another. It's not even worth mentioning what the plot of the story is. The karate action is also pretty fake looking as you can see that the actors are not actually hitting the opponent.

A good movie to watch if you have nothing to do on a rainy evening, which is exactly what I did. It's in the genre of mindless entertainment, and as for that it's worth a watch.

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.

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.

Usually I start reviews with a plot summary, but it is not necessary. The title says it all. It's Japanese, but don't worry about having to keep up with the subtitles. None of the dialogue is worth reading. All of this movie is, is lousy fight scenes and training in between.

Now I could write about the acting, the directing or the production design etc. but I'm not, they are all lousy. Instead I'm going to write about the fighting, because when it comes to a movie like this, that is what is important. The fights are mildly entertaining. They are obviously fake. Very few of the attacks look painful. In a few shots it visible that the punch or kick doesn't make contact, yet the actor still acts like he is in intense pain. All of the fights are rather one sided and feature basic fighting moves. There is nothing amazing in this movie. No dangerous stunts or amazing attacks. Sure there are high kicks, but they are all replayed and disrupt the flow of the scenes.

Now I would like to touch on the camera work. I usual don't notice the camera work in movies, but it was terrible. There are jump cuts, shakiness and odd angle that make the fight scenes even more unpleasing. There also long pause to create drama, but only create yawns.

There is one good thing I can say and that is that the movie is inspirational for teenage girls interested in karate. The main character is someone that girls can relate to. She is also a good role model. At the beginning of the movie she is disobedient. Then over the course of the movie she learns to respect her teacher. It does teach some morals for teenage girls. It also show the amount of discipline need to learn karate.

Over all I give the movie a four out of ten and that is generous.

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.