Tags: blog, film, action, comedy, 2025, recommended
Author: KickingK
Date: Monday September 01st, 2025
That's my gun! Give it back to me!
What if: John Wick but the assassins guild is just like every other service industry, with sub-contractors and middle-managers and they hire bored teenagers to fill out the shifts.
That's it, that's the pitch.
Chisato is a super-eager, absent-minded dork. Mahiro is a shut-in introvert with an eating disorder1. Like many teenagers they don’t listen to instructions, are incredibly easily distracted, permanently bored and staggeringly annoying. They both have a propensity to solve their frustrations with the modern world with extreme and excessive violence.
Surprisingly, for the majority of its run time, the film focuses on their lives as awkward teenagers trying to navigate the world of part time jobs and flat shares. Their apathy and total disconnection from the bullshit jobs and meaningless managerial speak is hilarious, with the comedy coming equally from both the stupid situations they find themselves in and their complete inability to deal with it in anything like a mature manner.
The apathetic attitude is shared by the films general direction. Whole scenes are shot as if someone’s plonked the camera down and buggered off. The actors do their thing for five minutes and that’s a wrap. The editing is occasionally non-existent, Edgar Wright this is not.
The script bumbles around, mostly aimlessly, occasionally remembering that there was a plot around here somewhere that needs to be advanced.
Thankfully, the two main actors manage to consistently walk the fine line between teeth-gratingly annoying and adorably funny so it never loses you completely. Their friendship is believable and relatable. You spend the whole film invested in it and rooting for the two of them.
Eventually, the film realises that it needs an ending and so the two girls need to face down an entire Yakuza clan. At which point, from out of nowhere, suddenly erupts the best one-on-one fight scene I’ve watched in a decade. No frills, no fancy weapons, no special effects, barely even a set. Just two fighters absolutely tearing into each other. Like the rest of the film, the camera stays steady with minimal cutting, focused on the martial art moves and story telling. The result is a fight that feels believable and nasty, with real stakes, where you can see the skill, technique and ferocity involved.
It’s not quite as good as the lift fight in Merantau, but it’s not far off it either. It’s blistering.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
1. Of the ‘Airplane’ kind.
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