La vie extraordinaire de Sachiko Hanai
- 2003
- 1h 30m
Sachiko Hanai is a call girl. One day she is caught up in a gunfight and is shot in the forehead. Instead of killing her, the bullet in her head gives her psychic powers. She also accidental... Read allSachiko Hanai is a call girl. One day she is caught up in a gunfight and is shot in the forehead. Instead of killing her, the bullet in her head gives her psychic powers. She also accidentally comes into possession of a cylinder containing George W. Bush's finger, whose fingerpri... Read allSachiko Hanai is a call girl. One day she is caught up in a gunfight and is shot in the forehead. Instead of killing her, the bullet in her head gives her psychic powers. She also accidentally comes into possession of a cylinder containing George W. Bush's finger, whose fingerprint is designed to launch a nuclear missile, and international spies are soon chasing her.
- Surfer
- (as Yuichi Ishikawa)
- Director
- Writer
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Featured reviews
you can put yourself through many intriguing ideas throughout this movie. do Japanese love urban America lifestyle? are they just addicted to the glamour fantasy like on a cheap drug? or do they seriously take it as a joke upon themselves that ultimately hits back to the source?
giving in to the senses will melt preconceptions and make it so more real... but don't just take it for the lust it brings upon you. if you do give in try to keep yourself cool
- it's like a bullet in the head!
I can say this. The film is offbeat and has a distinct charm and sense of humor to it. In this world where Transformers is the number 1 movie in America (God help us all), The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai is a much needed change of pace.
Again, I will stress. Do not dismiss this film because of the sex and nudity in it. Watch it through and you will like it. Also, ignore the box calling it "a mixture of Godard and the South Park crew." Godard could never make a movie like this
C'mon, I mean (and I'm not complaining - I enjoy the occasional sexy-sexy shows OK?) right from the beginning you're teased by Sachiko's butt and boobs. She's a call girl for hire, playing to her client's fantasies, like role playing a school teacher. One fine day, she got caught up in a restaurant shootout, and escaped alive with a bullet lodged in the head. She undergoes an unexplainable transformation, in terms of intelligence, gaining an insatiable desire for knowledge, as well as having a supercharged sex drive.
Bunking in with the family of a professor she seeked, more sex is assured with the professor and his introverted son. But the weirdness factor got upped through the introduction of George Bush's cloned finger (comes with the Stars-and-Stripes painted on the nail), which has telepathy, and a life of its own. Since it's a finger, there's no prizes guessing correctly what a finger gotta do. The movie becomes a cheap satire on Bush and his pro-war policies, and I'm not too sure if it's for pure cheesiness or a low production budget which led to wire-work not being cleaned up, and cheapo GI-Joe toy figurines substituting the real Joes, and a really tacky looking Bush who creatively uses his fingers over the airwaves.
As another subplot, the North Korean gunman who's looking for the finger, and was responsible for the bullet in Sachiko's head, ended up trying to hunt Sachiko down, through tracing her contact via her mobile phone, staking out inside her home (cleaning the home, keeping her red panties, and fantasizing), and through an incredible stroke of luck, got to the home of the professor to get to Sachiko. He provided much of the laughs (though I don't think most was intentional), as the gunfights he had (some which made not much sense) turned out to be rather comical instead.
I think I can count up till about at least seven sex scenes, and another equivalent number of masturbation scenes, for the reason that Sachiko doesn't feel a thing why having sex, and only feels the (pleasurable) effects some time after. Sexploitation? You tell me. Works out to be about one sex scene every 7 minutes.
It's one of those movies which almost every male character has sex with the female lead, and the female characters having the urge to remove (or forcefully so) their clothing. It's campy, it doesn't make much sense, and most of what you see on screen, is probably just for the sake of being there. You know not to take this movie seriously when the American national anthem accompanies the end credits, sung badly in Japanese, with an after-the-end-credits scene that simply just implodes.
If you're feeling horny, then this movie might just be your cup of tea.
The premise of this film is just too weird. A prostitute gets shot in the head and, instead of dying, becomes a genius. She's also carrying George Bush's finger. How strange can a movie get? Now, you just have to imagine soft-core porn while discussing Nietzsche and Kirkegaard, et. al. Of course, it is the discussion of the neocons that make it interesting, the the "Bush Technique" that will have you in stitches.
Netflixers will certainly want to explore this film. How often does your porn come with philosophical or political messages? The only thing that spoils this otherwise Tromaesque offering is the gratuitous rape scene.
Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Language
- Also known as
- The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai
- Filming locations
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Gross US & Canada
- $5,383
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $1,787
- Apr 15, 2007
- Gross worldwide
- $5,383
- Runtime1 hour 30 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.85 : 1