K-20: Legend of the Mask
AKA: K-20: Kaijin niju menso den
Dir. Shimako Sato (Japan 2008)
Rating: 2 ½ out of 4 Stars (above average)
Capsule Review by: David Austin

K-20: LEGEND OF THE MASK PLAYS AT THE IFC CENTER ON JUNE 20 AT 8:15 PM AND ON JUNE 30 AT 1:45 PM. SEE THE FULL SCHEDULE HERE

K-20 is silly fun; an old-fashioned matinee crowd-pleaser in the vein of The Rocketeer or the Indiana Jones films. Set in an alternate universe where World War II never happened and Japan has retained its Victorian-era stratification of society, the film pits a dashing hero against a cartoon villain – master thief Kaijin 20: The Fiend with 20 Faces - before a steampunk backdrop. It’s definitely kids’ stuff, the sort of film that might star Brendan Fraser if made in the US, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t get a kick out of the showmanship, starting with K-20’s first appearance – ripping off a rubber face at a press conference to reveal a serial villain’s mask and fedora, along with a catchy maniacal cackle. Today’s more serious superhero opuses, with their angst and extreme violence, rarely find time for the lighthearted fun that powers most of K-20.

Takeshi Kaneshiro, whose boyish good looks have matured since his turns in Wong Kar-wai’s earlier films, stars as Heikichi Endo, lower-class circus athlete (shades of Robin’s origin). The mysterious K-20 frames Endo in order to distract ace detective Kogoro Akechi (stone-faced Toru Nakamura) from his plan to capture an electrical doomsday machine created by Nikola Tesla, forcing Endo to adopt an identity as a cat burglar. Meanwhile, Takako Matsu makes for a fun heroine as Duchess Yoko Hashiba – while no Karen Allen or Margot Kidder, she’s spunky and having more fun than anyone else in the movie. For Endo, having to hide from the authorities is cause to bemoan his fate. For Yoko, it is an excuse to break free from the bonds that have stifled her all her life.

K-20 is packed with fun pop culture references and slick special effects. Sato creates a credible world, where police zeppelins co-exist with gyrocopters in a city still caught in the throes of the art deco movement. While not quite on the level of Hollywood’s filmic Gothams, K-20’s Teito, capital of this alternate universe Japan, has great visual appeal and provides enjoyable stomping grounds for the film’s numerous parkour-inspired action scenes. Similarly, K-20’s take on Edogawa Rampo’s Detective Kogoro Akechi, the great Sherlock Holmes figure of Japanese literature, is an interesting one. The film’s Akechi is a cold, removed aristocrat, who first reaction to his fiancée’s attempt at seduction is to suspect a plot.

The plot is full of holes and clichés but, even at over two hours, director Shimako Sato provides K-20 with enough momentum to help viewers endure the occasional slower and sillier stretches, with a few exceptions. The worst offenders are the scenes featuring orphans – these are pure treacle, clumsily illustrating the miseries of the underclass and even going so far as to use the gratuitous and tonally inappropriate death of a child to hammer its point home. However, I’m willing to overlook a certain amount of crap from any director who works in a sly homage to Empire Strikes Back.

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Samurai Princess
AKA: Samurai purinsesu: Gedô-hime; Samurai Princess: Devil Princess
Dir. Kengo Kaji (Japan 2009)
Rating: 2 out of 4 Stars (average)
Capsule Review by: David Austin

SAMURAI PRINCESS PLAYS AT THE IFC CENTER ON JUNE 20 AT 12:00 AM AND ON JUNE 30 AT 4:30 PM. SEE THE FULL SCHEDULE HERE

Samurai Princess hits all the usual notes of Japan’s latest wave of gore films, but is something of a letdown coming from one of the creative minds behind last year’s wonderful Tokyo Gore Police. As directed by Kengo Kaji, screenwriter for Tokyo Gore Police (and supervising screenwriter for the excellent Uzumaki), Samurai Princess is equally gory and insane, but more shrill and far less clever than its predecessor. Tokyo Gore Police may have been ridiculous splatstick, but it was made with an immense amount of artistry, approaching Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead II and Paul Verhoeven’s subversive Robocop and Starship Troopers. While Tokyo Gore Police may have been low-budget, it never looked cheap. Samurai Princess, on the other hand, has a cramped, direct-to-video feel about it that copious blood, guts and breasts can’t quite overcome.

Samurai Princess is set in an anachronistic world, where samurai and swords co-exist with factories, chainsaws and androids (an all-purpose term for Frankenstein-esque killers made out of recycled body parts). Aino Kishi stars as a former novice nun turned powerful (and occasionally naked) android reconstituted from of the parts of her slaughtered sisters (along with fun extras that probably aren’t standard at the convent, such as breast bombs, rotary saws and plasma-generating hands). Aiding her is a guitar hero (Dai Mizuno) capable of playing body-shredding chords, who wants to seek out and slay the source of the mutant androids - mad scientist Kyouraku (a philosophical descendant of Battle Angel Alita’s Desty Nova), who is more concerned with the artistic motivations of his creations than the bloody havoc they wreak. The girls of the Shogun’s Anti-Android division also make an appearance, along with a Buddhist nun.

All of this hits the screen in a borderline incoherent manner that makes it difficult to engage with the plot or characters on anything other than a whiz-bang, spectacle level. Usually, faced with this sort of insanity in a Japanese film, I assume it is based on a manga and that there is some method to the madness which did not make it up onto the screen. However, by all appearances, the screenplay is an original work by Kaji. Perhaps I was wrong, but I expected more from the man who penned the sly Tokyo Gore Police.

Nevertheless, those looking for outrageous gore won’t be disappointed. Yoshihiro Nishimura, special effects guru and director of Tokyo Gore Police, helped to produce and create the effects for Samurai Princess, resulting in gags like skeletons being punched clear out of bodies. Unfortunately, Kaji does not yet have the directorial chops to build a real picture around the grue.

© David Austin