High Kick Girl

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HIGH KICK GIRL ("Hai kikku g�ru!") is watchable once you disregard the bare-bones plot, that the characters aren't given much backstory, and that the interaction of the cast rings wooden. The slipshod production values inform you that the film was perhaps budgeted on change that someone dug out from under their sofa cushions. There's a whole lot of amateur in this flick, cinema-wise. The karate stuff, that's the real shizzy.

HIGH KICK GIRL is a film of non-firsts in terms of story elements. Kei Tsuchida is a high school girl who demonstrates an aptitude for martial arts, but she's going about it all wrong, or to get all purple-prosy, Kei Tsuchida is straying from the path of righteousness and enlightenment. Kei, still a brown belt, chafes under her sensei Yoshiaki Matsumura's philosophy which stresses the importance of mastering the katas and employing karate primarily for protection and survival. Matsumura preaches: "In order to be strong, kata practice is best." But Kei, impatient and in private, sniffs disdainfully at that. Kei would rather show off her skills. Kei has got her swagger on, all plaid mini-skirt and dismissive demeanor.

Eager to prove herself, she gains a reputation for hunting black belts, crashing rival dojos and challenging (and humiliating) the teachers. She even ends up wiping out an entire dojo. Wise Master Matsumura disapproves, no surprise, and he riffs on that age-old blah-blah-blah about serenity and violence as a last resort and maybe even about the beauty of bamboo shoots by moonlight and such (okay, I'm paraphrasing). Just to show how much Kei takes her sensei's lecture to heart, she promptly responds to a recruitment offer from a shady organization called the Destroyers. The Destroyers are comprised of thuggish martial artists who basically sell their services for money. And so what a shocker it is that Kei finds herself out of her depth.

So, karate isn't the showiest discipline in the realm of martial arts, and yet the big selling point of HIGH KICK GIRL is the realism of the fight scenes. Never mind the thin plot, it just serves as a framing device for what we come to the show for, anyway: the wicked, wicked boots to the head. There are no wire works or CG or stunt doubles, and no actors faking mastery of martial arts. The stars come with bonafide credentials and do their own stuff and take their own lumps. Lithe newcomer Rina Takeda (17 years old during filming) boasts a black belt in Ryukyu Shorin-ryu Karate. The disappointing thing is that she's not featured in more action sequences. She has her best moments when she goes thru a bunch of deadly schoolgirls. Tatsuya Naka, a real karate champion and master, is accomplished as hell and he's got that stoic Sho Kosugi mojo going on. The high-octane final half hour is an action junkie's delight, but it's more a showcase for Naka's sensei-on-a-mission routine, and this would ordinarily be a gripe of mine - because, mind you, the title of the movie isn't HIGH KICK NON-MINI-SKIRT-WEARING SENSEI - except that Naka is pretty impressive when he takes out an army of henchmen and dude isn't even sweating that hard (but again you wonder why the henchmen don't all just bumrush him). Rina does get a chance to wipe the floor with a crazy laughing goon.

If it sometimes seems as if vicious kicks and punches were really landing with full force, that's because they probably were. Pity the poor, achy stunt folks after enduring this gauntlet of getting vigorously smacked around. And just to show that these are full contact kicks and strikes being administered, the camera is generous with the gratuitous slow-mo instant replays, even though some of these action shots really don't deserve the one more time treatment. But some do. Occasionally, there is a display of precision and dynamic execution to savor. But I can do without all the posing and staring at a downed opponent. Surprisingly, the sensei is guilty of this bit of melodrama as much as Kei. But I should've gotten a clue when the sensei was caught earlier practicing by a waterfall. How cliched can you get?

Disappointingly, the DVD special features don't come with English sub-titles, so unless you speak Japanese, you won't really know what the cast says in the interview portions. But these extras are worth checking out anyway for the behind-the-scenes stuff on the action sequences. There's the 28-minute "Making Of" segment; "Rina's Action Techniques" (almost 6 minutes) - Rina conducting demos and going thru workout drills which definitely include sparring; "Naka's Action Techniques" (46 minutes) - Rina and two male voices (I'm assuming Tatsuya Naka and director Fuyuhiko Nishi) provide commentary during the shooting of the fight sequences (you also get to see Rina kick a cigarette off a guy's lips and a water bottle off a guy's dome).

HIGH KICK GIRL came out roughly a year after CHOCOLATE, and Rina Takeda reminds me some of CHOCOLATE's Muay Thai-wielding Jeeja Yanin, although Rina isn't as flashy or stylish. But CHOCOLATE had more to offer in the way of depth, so maybe Rina falls short and seems more mechanical because of the lack of story content and an adequate platform from which she could really strut her stuff. I get the definite sense that Rina Takeda is nothing to sneeze at. I know she can clobber the eff out of you and me. I hope to see her in a better film project soon.

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