It’s difficult to imagine where exactly the ideas for contemporary Japanese action pictures—post-Kurosawa, anyway—originate. I’m guessing, focus groups comprised of video-game-savvy fifth-graders. Who else could come up with “Recruited by a clandestine police organization, K must stop a plot by student radicals to create anarchy in Japan. Armed with a high-tech steel yo-yo and a new name, she must infiltrate an elite high school to find the terrorists”? Actually, the title Yo-Yo Girl Cop is a poorly Anglicized device to lure kids, for whom yo-yos still represent something of a novelty. The Japanese title, Sukeban deka: Kodonemu = Asamiya Saki, translates to Female Delinquent Detective: Codename = Saki Asamiya. Sukeban has its roots in a popular schoolgirl-action manga, which already has inspired three TV series, two movies and an anime. (Overflowing with uniformed students, the subgenre undoubtedly appeals to fetishists, as well.) Given all that, Yo-Yo Girl Cop isn’t nearly as much fun as it ought to be ... unless, of course, you actually are a fifth-grade boy and K (pop star Aya Matsuura) is the coolest girl you’ve ever seen. The film is largely in English, but whatever dubbing was required is painless.
Yo-Yo Girl Cop
***
Not rated
$26.98
Even more crazy is Dynamite Warrior, a balls-to-the-wall actioner set in rural Thailand in the 1920s, a period roughly equivalent to that assayed in Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch. Here, the closing of the frontier is telegraphed by the arrival of tractors—sold by a local potentate—to replace the traditional beasts of burden. A range war ensues, but one that resembles something Mack Sennett might have choreographed in collaboration with Hong Kong’s Shaw Brothers. In addition to the dynamite used to avenge the murder of the good guy’s parents—at the hands of a tattoo-covered cattle rustler—the weaponry here includes a sort of bamboo rocket that can be ridden like a surfboard.
And, speaking of the Shaw Brothers, even casual fans of Hong Kong kung-fu thrillers should be excited by the arrival of a half-dozen classic titles from the Shaw Brothers catalogue, under Weinstein Company’s Dragon Dynasty logo. They include The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, King Boxer/Five Fingers of Death, My Young Auntie, Shanghai Express, Above the Law and The One-Armed Swordsman. As the titles suggest, they’re a blast.
Dynamite Warrior
***
Not rated
$26.98