I recall buying this at
Kim's Video in Manhattan about 20 years ago and I finally got around to watching
it. For some reason I had it in my mind that it was directed by Takeshi Miike
- sort of a Miike take on the Hardy Boys. Well, wrong on all accounts. It
is in fact directed by Masafumi Fuchii who has only one other credit. That
does not surprise me after watching this. I only wish that Miike had directed
it. This is nearly incoherent and at 103 minutes, could easily have had 40
minutes shorn off and you might have an ok film. At least it would be shorter.
It has one thing going for it - three very attractive young actresses. Much
of the time it feels like a sci-fi Idol film. The three boys look to have
escaped from a boy's band. Miike could have had fun with this.
Fuchi instead just wanders about from plot to plot and character to character
pointlessly. He takes up fifteen minutes of the film with the four friends
frolicking in a park for no reason. Another time we spend ten minutes in
a Wendy's. It is the sort of film you know you should bail out of but a certain
fascination and lethargy sets in - just how bad can it get and I am already
30 minutes in and Kyoko Fukada is darn cute. So, you sit there and keep checking
the time left continuously.
The film begins with high schooler Sosuke (Masaki Aiba) riding around on
his scooter through the night streets of Shinjuku - the garish greens and
reds from the neon lights making everything look cool and dangerous - the
camera follows him for five minutes zipping down alley ways, across streets,
dodging pedestrians till he finally gets home. This is the best part of the
film. Stop here. To my regret I went on. A rumor has gone around the school
that there is a mysterious girl who comes out at night and accosts other
women on their own and asks them to be her friend. If they answer no, she
kills them. She is lonely. There is a good film there but it is not this
film. One night Sosuke hears a scream and rushes over to find a scared girl
and an eerie young woman - later we find out her name is Alisha. The scared
girl runs off and a very large robotic dog shows up with red glowing eyes
and Sosuke falls to the ground. But later he finds a device on the ground
and takes it to his genius friend Kentaro (Jun Matsumoto) who discovers that
it is a communication device that basically is a Smart Phone.
The two of them team up with two girls - Mika (Kyoko) and Kyoko (Ai Kato)
to investigate. When they are not in the park or having parental issues or
just doing nothing much. Mika is a famous model who her mother tries to starve
- the big drama of the film is when a paparazzi takes a picture of her stuffing
a bun into her mouth - a scandal! Eventually the film crawls back to the
plot - a mad scientist, a feud between Chinese sorcerers that has been going
on for hundreds of years, an android, a vampire who just needs to hold hands
and so on. This part was hokey as hell but could have been an ok film - all
the other filler is rubbish. Kyoko Fukada is pretty adorable - an Idol, singer
and actress - this was her film debut and she would go on to be in tons of
TV but also a favorite film - the Lolita Girl (frilly fashions from the 18th
century) in Kamikaze Girls. A lovely film that I need to revisit. At least
this reminded me of that.
