Director: Takashi Ishii
Year: 1998
Rating: 7.0
Director Takashi Ishii overcomes the low budget settings of this Japanese Girls with Guns film with a firestorm of style and swagger. Much of it is shot in dim lights or neon enhanced surroundings, a light fog, faces peeking out of the shadows or around the corner and beautiful women holding guns ready to shoot. In a typical low budget deserted building there is a five minute continuous unedited shot of the protagonist trying to escape her captives as she runs around the floor only to be met with resistance as the camera follows her like a shadow. There is no reason for this but I like the ambition. Ishii as a director or writer was behind most of the Angel Guts films, Evil Trap Dead and other assorted or sordid films that were filmed partly for shock value and had more than their share of perversity. There is a bit here but this feels much more commercial and conventional than his previous films. A slight bit of nudity and sex but mainly guns and a noirish plot that Raymond Chandler would have been proud of.
In the opening scene a man apparently kidnaps a baby girl and brings her up. He is her grandfather and a Yakuza Kingpin. A few years later his time is up as killers are sent to take him and everyone else out including the little girl named Ikko. Only the little girl escapes with the help of the Black Angel (Reiko Takashima) or Mayo to her friends. She is an assassin and sends Ikko to be brought up in America, Some years latter Ikko (Riona Hazuki) returns with vengeance on her mind. To find out who killed her grandfather and the woman she thinks was her mother. Her traveling companion is Zill (Yoshiyuki Yamaguchi) a gay kung fu friend who for reasons unknown has decided to help her kill. And to perform a very wonderful joyous synchronized dance in their hotel room that is a high point of this film and totally unexpected. This comes after they have killed a few low level Yakuzas.
Things don't go as planned though - the Black Angel who she has idolized all these years has turned into a drug and alcohol riddled shadow of her past self. In fact, the man who Ikko wants to kill has hired the Black Angel to kill Ikko. Some nice shootouts follow as the past begins to reveal itself. This ranks a bit high on the stupid meter such as Ikko jumping from a high floor above and shooting guys on the way down and then rolls and shoots some more. Who does she think she is? Chow Yun Fat? Riono is as cute as a chipmunk at Christmas and the Black Angel is lovely. And deadly. My kind of film.
The Black Angel Vol II
Director: Takashi Ishii
Year: 1999
Rating: 6.0
I am not entirely sure if the second Black Angel film from Takeshi Ishii is a sequel or a prequel or simply another tale of a Japanese female hitwoman who just happens to have the same name as in the first film but played by a different actress (Yûki Amami). I suppose it doesn't really matter. The Girls with Guns had a nice little spurt in Japan in the 1990s and early 2000's with a bunch of straight to video films like these, the Beautiful series and the Gun Crazy films. Fun, low budget, beautiful female killers. There is always a fan base for that. Time for another one.
Ishii constructs a complex story of intersecting lives in which guilt, coincidence and fate plays a strong part. It begins in the dreaded underground parking garage where something almost always bad happens in movies (with the exception of All the President's Men). Mayo the Black Angel (I only wish I could have a cool nickname like that) gets an assignment from her transvestite agent to kill a second level Yakuza Boss in the parking garage where he will be with a few of his men. The agent knows this because another Yakuza Boss in the same family has taken out the contract. But it all goes to hell. As Mayo is ready to fulfill the contract another pair of killers show up and try to beat her to it and then on top of this a pair of lovers happen to wander in. Everybody gets shot in the confusion - Mayo is badly wounded in the leg, her target in the shoulder, the two killers killed and the young man in the pair is killed. Mayo also realizes that the henchman Yamamba (Takashi Yamato) shooting at her was in fact a man who had saved her from being gang raped years before while she was still an innocent student.
This collision of fates destroys all of their lives and sets up an aftermath of guilt, grief and revenge. Suzu (Reiko Kataok) the partner of the innocent man killed nearly goes man with grief and realizes only revenge will allow her to let him go. By accident Yamamba was the man who killed him (not the Black Angel as much of the Internet has it) and is distraught with guilt and wants to make it up to her. Mayo knows that Yamamba's action in saving her from being raped ended up getting him sent to jail and his shamed mother killed through suicide. It gets nastier - Suzu is raped in a hard to watch scene - and the killing increases as Mayo still needs to finish that damn contract and then is betrayed. In the end they all end up together holed up - Suzu not knowing that it is Yamambe who killed her boyfriend and Yamambe not knowing that Mayo - "she lookeda little like you" - is the woman he saved that screwed up his life. And the Yakuza are coming. Less stylish than the first and darker with some slow stretches but it still has the requisite body count. Too bad there wasn't a third.
