Zero woman: Kesenai kioku

After successfully pulling off a daring hit on a man surrounded by bodyguards, Rei (Mikiyo Ohno) becomes the target of a (rather clumsy, I would say) assassin. While dealing with him, she also meets a female masseuse, with whom she seems to be linked by a traumatic incident in the past, and a genial male waiter who is flirting with her.

A definite step up from the dismal previous entry ("The Accused"), "Zero Woman 5: The Hunted", has, in my opinion, the most convincing as an assassin actress to play Rei so far. Mikiyo Ohno (who, by the way, looks much more beautiful in the film than she does on the DVD cover) has the right cold, blank stare when she's executing someone, and I liked how she showed Rei's comfort and knowledgeability about different types of guns. However, the action scenes aren't particularly well-done, the pacing is once again narcotizing at times, and the script has a few minor new ideas (the real identity of the masseuse) but no major new ones: it all comes down, once again, to Rei wanting to leave the Zero Division but finding it difficult to do so. Even the last scene is pretty much the exact same it was in "Zero Woman" Parts 1 & 3. (**)

This episode starts of a la James Bond, as Zero Woman (Mikiyo Ono) is swimming, apparently alone, then all hell breaks loose.

The diminutive beauty appears to meet her match with a character taken right from the WWE. But, she manages to prevail. As she does with a really dumb hit-man who lets her get all the way across the room to get to her gun. Dude, you really should find another line of work.

The big drawback to the film is that the action comes rarely and the time is filled with dreams and flashbacks to others. Do we really need to spend valuable film stock watching someone eat noodles and look out the window? We get the impression that Zero Woman is a really unhappy agent. But, that is not surprising when a guy she is having sex with gets blown away before he can finish the job, leaving her high and dry. You really felt for the waiter that tried to cheer this babe up. Even he couldn't get a smile out of her; and he couldn't bring home the bacon, either.

I do have to say that I really enjoyed the photography of Hiroshi Takase. The picture was incredibly beautiful.

The movie begins with "Rei" (Mikiyo Ono) being instructed to execute a German underworld boss who is surrounded by bodyguards at all times. So in order to carry out her orders Rei shows up at a discreet swimming pool at the same time as her target. Upon quickly strangling him while he is submerged in the water she then turns her attention to the bodyguards and kills as many as possible while making her escape. Unfortunately, during the altercation her picture is obtained and she now has to contend with a paid assassin along with a vicious handler who is extremely possessive about her as well. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that I was somewhat disappointed with this particular addition to the Zero Woman series. For starters, the entire pace of the film seemed to be exceedingly slow with rather dull pieces of action and sex thrown in every now and then to apparently spice things up. Likewise, the director (Norihisa Yoshimura) seemed intent on keeping as much information from the audience as possible which only caused a certain amount of ambiguity and confusion. In short, this movie should have been much better if the director had been more focused on making a good action movie instead of trying to create something artistic or full of hidden meanings. In any case, I have rated this film accordingly. Slightly below average.