Karatê Girl

Tsuchiya is a karate student that gets entangled with some bad people in "High-Kick Girl!". Cue lots of kicks followed by lots of kicks. Afterwards... more kicks.

The story is non-existent. Tsuchiya likes to pick up fights with random karate students till she gets in problems with a group whose leader has some history with her teacher. All of this is just an excuse to throw one fight after another in front of the viewer.

So far, so good. Martial arts movies can be lots of fun with a flimsy plot as this one ("Ong-Bak", I am looking at you). The acting is wooden (especially one-expression Tatsuya Naka, but we are not here to see characters have feelings but kick and punch). But "High- Kick Girl!" also fails in the aspect a martial arts movie should shine: the fights. Yes, we have lots of fights and fighters of all sizes and colors. Sadly, the direction is really really poor and the set pieces totally wasted. On top of that, our friend Fuyuhiko Nishi, the director, has a penchant for slow motion fights where he shows us not once, not twice, but three times the same kick or punch, till our eyes starts rolling. Because it is a constant, not once or twice to highlight a specific move.

Too bad, because Rina Takeda's Tsuchiya is fun to be with.

No pun intended - I like low budget movies. So you may not be on board with my score or my general view of the low budget movie at hand here. You may not like the fighting and stunt work it presents. I do think it has hits and misses (yes more puns - or is it puns-es? As in punches - get it?).

There seem to be quite a few moments where people wait to be beaten up - but suspend your disbelief and go with the flow and you may actually have some fun with this. And not just at the end/during the end credits and some outtakes (in the vain of Jackie Chans movies), but throughout the movie. This is not the best martial arts movie - it does not claim to be. But if you have a heart for them - give it a go.

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.

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.

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.