Hard Revenge, Milly I &
II
Hard Revenge, Milly (2008) - 7.0
This Japanese video is only 45-minutes long
but that is enough time for lots of joyous intoxicating violence and gushing
gore. It is like the Trevi Fountain of blood. Decapitated heads. Holes in
the stomach big enough to take a tour group through. A cut off hand
giving the finger as a final gesture of contempt. A headless man blasting
a gun as a last orgastic breath. A deadly teddy bear. And then a monstrous
slicing machine that makes cat food out of a man like a sushi chef on uppers.
All in 45-minutes.
Millie (Miki Mizuno) has a lot to be pissed
about in a post-apocalyptic world in which Tokyo is now an empty desert.
It also allows this very low budget film to be set in deserted spaces with
only six characters. But they make up for this lack of money with lovely
over the top splashes of black humor and imagination. A gang of four psychopaths
slaughter Milly's family by burning her baby, killing her husband and stabbing
her multiple times like a piece of meat in a butcher's shop. She survives.
And now it is time for retribution and it comes in colors. Clearly not to
everyone's taste but I found it good fun. It is extreme but that is the point
of the film in the same vein as The Machine Girl and Tokyo Gore Police were.
It was only director's Takanori Tsujimoto's second film. There is a sequel.
Hard Revenge,
Milly - Bloody Battle (2009) - 6.0
The first Hard Revenge: Milly finished with
a sequel implied and here it is with a slightly larger budget, a longer running
time (73 minutes), more characters and just as much gushing blood from severed
heads and hands. And arms. And huge holes where the stomach used to be. But
it really has no emotional or shocking impact. This is nearly playful violence.
So extreme that it is silly and goofy. And the special effects are clever
and cartoonish like its Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner. This one too
implies that a sequel is in the planning but sadly it never happened. Sadly,
because though this is as far from great filmmaking as The Cat in the Hat
is from War and Peace, there is a skivvy audience for this sort of thing
and that includes me.
At the end of the first film our heroine
Milly finds a written threat that she will be killed in revenge for the men
she killed in that film. And it doesn't take long for the bloodletting to
begin. Five men come after her and are soon fodder for the crows. Two brothers
find them and comment "Did they really think they could kill Milly? (Miki
Mizuno). By this time, she has gained a reputation as quite the deadly killer.
That is their intention as well but they are much better. In a fight one
of the brothers loses his fingers, but Milly loses an arm. Picture the geyser
of blood smearing the camera. No problem though. A doctor attaches another
arm that is a detachable weapon. We could all use one. Milly is as much machine
as woman. The final fight has some excellent action choreography and is a
hoot. It is not as good as the first one, too much dithering and would have
been better at a concentrated 45 minutes. Still good bloody fun. Both films
are really cinematic exercises in absurd violence.
