Gun Woman (2014)

GUN WOMAN is a low budget, gritty slice of Japanese exploitation, shot in America, that contains some explicit themes and a lot of style to make up for the lack of budget. The director certainly works hard to build up a sense of rhythm and dynamism and he succeeds in that respect, making a film which is watchable despite the darkness of some of the subject matter.The tale is about a crazed assassin with a penchant for necrophilia who's protected by a sinister organisation for whatever reason. A man whose wife was murdered decides to get revenge, but the bad guy's level of defence is such that doing so will prove near impossible. So he concocts a plan that involves endless nudity on the part of the lead actress and some very outre moments.GUN WOMAN is a strong film in terms of subject matter. The female nudity is constant while the gore is very strong indeed and painful too in places. The film is dialogue heavy at times but it's never silly unlike some other Japanese exploitation movies like TOKYO GORE POLICE. It builds to an effective bit of action cinema at the climax with the last 20 minutes chock-full of well-choreographed mayhem. Is it a perfect film? No, not really, but then few films are. GUN WOMAN delivers what it sets out to deliver, which is to give the viewer an hour and a half of heavily stylised violence with an original streak.

The Japanese are renowned for their whacky sense of humour, but they also have a darker side, or in this case a sicker side. Sadism, rape, murder, necrophilia, cannibalism? These are schoolboy jokes, not adult entertainment. Alas, all and more are included herein. The wife of a doctor is murdered before his eyes by one of the most degenerate human beings on the face of the planet; the doctor himself is crippled by the same lowlife but left alive so he can tell the world what a wonderful person his benefactor is. Not. He decides not unreasonably to exact revenge on this individual, and comes up with an extremely novel plan (one that is physically impossible in several ways). This is where Gun Woman comes in.At this point she is his slave, but he promises her her freedom if she completes her bloody mission, which involves an act of mass murder, even granted that all those who are to die almost certainly deserve it. Can she really trust this man though, who murders an innocent woman in front of her eyes as part of her training? More to the point, doesn't the Doctor realise he has become what he seeks to destroy?Any points this one gets are strictly for mild special effects, and a half decent soundtrack by Dean Harada.

"Gun Woman" is a fairly ludicrous movie in terms of the story, because it is so far out there, that it borders on stupidity.The story is about a doctor whose wife is raped and murdered by a lunatic. Left for dead, the doctor recovers and eventually buys a drug addict woman in order to train her to become his tool for revenge, a trained assassin to kill the man who wronged him and took away his wife.Yep, that was the entire storyline wrapped up in a few sentences. The storyline actually makes no sense at all, given the concept of it and the whole idea.That being said, then "Gun Woman" is actually entertaining enough for what it is, even though a bit too much of the movie was spent on the assassin training sequence, which just dragged on and on.The acting is as expected in a movie such as this, and with Asami as the lead role, you know exactly what you get. Hand on heart, then I found the acting to be wooden at best, and the dialogue is usually delivered in a nonchalant way.While "Gun Woman" is not a milestone in cinema history, it is still entertaining enough for a single viewing if you enjoy movies that have no roots in realism at all.

I won't tell you anything about this movie. I'll just tell you that no matter if you'll like it or not, it is unlikely that you'll feel bored.It may look as a B-movie because of its B-locations and soundtrack but don't let them fool you: images are outstanding and each framing is destined to stay for long into your brain after you watched it: who wrote and directed this (Kurando Mitsutake) is without any doubt a competent artist.It's an impressive movie with a lot of blood: dark, thick, sticky blood. Violence however will be soon forgotten. And any drop of blood will seem appropriate in the end.