Well Go USA
The idea of a fun R-rated shoot-em-up movie is nothing new, but a classic take on that is the ironic juxtaposition approach. Underdogs, weaklings, etc, or even the unassuming but supremely capable, like Hit Girl from the movie Kick-Ass. The trick to something like that is the balance between believability and enjoyment, because most of them are inherently absurd — but if you’re enjoying yourself, you’ll probably ignore the underlying nonsensical premise.
Baby Assassins comes from director/writer Yûgo Sakamoto and takes place in one of those ‘John Wick’ styled worlds where there’s an established community of hitmen and hit-women for hire and the related services they require. We follow two young women, both about to graduate from high school and not really enthused about a typical future.
One is Chisato (Akari Takishi), more outgoing and typically girlish and has a much easier time getting along with ‘normal’ people. The other is Mahilo (Saori Izawa) who is an extreme introvert and more ‘plain’ in that cliched manner, socially awkward and obsessed with her assassin-related business and training. But both are shown as quite competent and capable right from the start (as assassins, anyway), despite both being immature in the way you’d expect teenagers to be.
The two also live together by necessity, and at the start of the movie are not exactly huge fans of the situation — this is one of the little arcs of the film. Their assassin ‘handler’ tells them that it raises too many red flags to have them living together and spending money coming into their accounts, so they need to get legitimate ‘legal’ jobs to obscure the truth of things.
Mahilo struggles with all of the ‘regular’ jobs, always fantasizing about killing annoying customers or coworkers. So Chisato gives her partner and friend (even though they often annoy each other) the opportunity to join her at one of those Japanese ‘hostess’ clubs where the women serve the men in sexy outfits — not that she thinks it’s really going to go that well. But when a particularly awful yakuza gangster threatens things, the bullets and knives start flying and things begin to escalate.
For the first half of the movie, we occasionally cut to watch a yakuza boss and his son, but also his far more driven daughter Himari (Mone Akitani) who is delightfully crazy and unhinged. It’s a little unclear at first what’s going on with the different characters, but soon things begin to intertwine and get completely out of control.
So we get a series of very fun action set pieces, including just a simply delightful classic shoot ‘em up final sequence. Akari Takaishi is a completely winning personality and a certified bad-ass here, contrasting well with the more low-key and awkward performance by Saori Izawa. The story is razor thin, mainly about the character beats and their little arcs of growth or destruction.
I suppose one real flaw is that I would’ve liked to see even more from the Himari character, the parallel wannabe gangster who would contrast well with the two assassins. As for them, the nature of their job and the people they work for is as mysterious as it usually is in such stories, so it’s not really a problem. It’s really just a fun sort of movie, even if it’s pretty bloody in a sort of CGI light-R manner.
I think for those looking for a sort of Kill Bill-lite kind of tale, this is a pretty fun option, with just enough shaking things up in the action beats to keep things interesting, and some quite fun performances at the center.
Baby Assassins has a run time of 1 hour 35 minutes and is not rated.
Well Go USA
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