Koibito wa sunaipâ: Gekijô-ban

The film is about a man who decides to extort money from the Japanese Government by holding the citizens of Japan to ransom through a rather ingenious method. However, due to the man's profession as a police lawyer, he is able to shield his identity by influencing elements of the investigation through contacts within the police itself. In desperation, the Government decide to hire the services of a sniper who, at the time, is serving a 250-year sentence in a forced labour camp for previous crimes committed. A cat-and-mouse game then ensues between sniper and lawyer.

The film's title, "My Lover is a Sniper", stems from the previous relationship between a woman who is on the police investigation team and the sniper who is brought out of forced labour to save the situation. Although this film is the third in the "Sniper" series, it stands alone as a film in it's own right, with no apparent unintelligible references to the previous two films in the series.

The film's pace is truly stock formula: opening high-paced introduction sequence to create the motive for the rest of the film. From there, it predictably slows down whilst character introductions are done before starting to wind-up about a third of the way through with the first big action sequence. From there, interest is maintained through slick, if not slightly predictable, story work, culminating in a particularly weak ending.

Character portrayal is average is my opinion, and not particularly deep; an unwelcome departure from Japanese films that I have watched in the past. However, performances are solid and credible, if not a little dubious given the apparent disregard at times for any similarity to real-life Japanese character or personality traits. However, this is offset against some well-executed camera work and some nice wide-overhead shots of Tokyo, which help give the film some scale as it moves around from location to location. Particularly nice are the wide, manga-style camera angles on the fight scenes, with the fight-work looking particularly precise in places.

Although an enjoyable film, this didn't quite live up to the expectation I had having watched previous Japanese movies. Previous movies I have watched have always managed to deliver something that truly allows me to reflect on a unique aspect of Japanese Culture or Film making. I watch all my Japanese movies in Japanese with no subtitling so that I can pick up all the cultural inflections and nuances that the script writers and producers intended to create. Even so, at the the end of this I kind of felt I hadn't really watched a Japanese film. Instead, it could quite easily have been copied from a Hollywood film and just translated; hence my slight disappointment.

If you want something that will keep you amused for 2 hours or so then this film will definitely do that. However, it is not particularly deep either culturally or performance-wise so it's probably best just to take it at face value.