Samehada otoko to momojiri onna

A man called Samehada ("Shark Skin") steals some money from his Yakuza boss, and goes on the run. He crosses paths with a girl called Momojiri ("Peach Hip", or "Peach Ass" if you prefer) who is fleeing from a hotel manager who doesn't treat her well. They decide to throw their fortunes in together and try to escape the Yakuza and an assassin.

The credit sequence introduces you to the cast of the characters you are about to meet, and it was very worrying... so many characters, I thought "it's going to get real confusing", but this is not the case at all. Even though there are a lot of characters, each one is well developed and unique - no problem following who they are and what their relationships are. It's one hell of a set of characters too... "colourful" hardly seems sufficiently descriptive, but they are all brilliantly conceived and portrayed. The main focus of the movie is the interplay between all these characters, with lots of sharp and witty dialogue throughout, and a generally black humour in the situations they get into and the way they get out of them.

The movie is fast moving... very well paced in fact, and beautifully filmed & edited too. There's a little bit of violence, but nothing that's going the slightest concern to anybody who's seen some Kitano or Miike. Almost wholesome in fact

It's difficult to say what makes the movie so good - it's not really any one thing - it's basically just an all-round clever, funny and exceptionally well made movie. Recommended!

My main impression with this movie is that something, somehow, has got lost on the way.

It might be that the script has been adapted from a manga; some situations and some of the characters antics, dragged out from their context, look so wacky they end to be grotesque. Nonetheless, one of the strongest point of the movie are the characters themselves - Yamada in particular.

The plot is the weakest one, it doesn't really make sense and I ended up suspecting that some elements has been simply cut because they didn't fit in the run time.

However, I've seen this movie in Japanese with subtitles, so I really can't comment about the "witty dialogs" which are supposed to be another strong point.

This movie is occasionally entertaining, but fails to leave a mark: it reminded me somehow of "I Went Down" (1997), which is definitely more entertaining than this one, tough.

Didn't think much while I was watching the show but the images and themes have come back strongly after. Yes, Sharkskin Man is a movie that I have not been able to get out of my mind. Part comedy, part Action-Adventure, part Fashion Parade, this film boasts of an incredibly hip cast with strong (in a subtle way) performances from the 2 leads. A highly entertaining movie that is as bizarre (if you've been watching commercial movies all your life) as it is romantic. Yes, ROMANTIC.

After reading the other comments, then actually seeing the film, it simply doesn't measure up.

The first 1/3 of the film is quite a blast, with nearly everything the reviews mention - fast editing and sassy dialogue, wacky characters and, for good measure, perhaps cinema history's shortest explicit sex scene (about four seconds).

But after this part, it loses most of its puff and all of its potential originality. A bit like getting on a rollercoaster, having a ripper ride, but the machine slowing to a crawl just before the first big dip, and crawling home slowly.

In conclusion, it does have good stuff, mostly at the beginning. Looks like it wanted to be a weird take on Pulp Fiction but got seriously lost.

Shark Skin Man and Peach Hip Girl was one of the best Japanese films that I have seen in a while. The fast pace, quick cuts, and awesome soundtrack made for a great movie. Not to mention the cool characters and decent plot. Tadanobu Asano wasn't as cool in this movie as he was in Ichi the Killer, but then again who could top anything from that movie. At first I didn't know if I would like the movie, being a fan of older samurai films and not much for no-plot action movies, but I'll have to hand it to this film, because even though the plot was a little main stream (man steals Yakuza money and then the gangsters go after him) the cinematography and the fact that the story wasn't really told in chronological order really made this movie stand out from the stereotypical action movie. The way the director would occasionally slow down or speed up the film, or intentionally put in serious jump-cuts, really added to the feel of the movie. I thought that it was a great movie and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys Japanese cinema.