Violence Action (2022)

If anyone is hyped for this movie, lower your expections and maybe skip it

I watched this at a theater after reading the first 2 volumes of the manga.
I seemed like it would be rather easy to adapt without needing expensive CGI and set pieces etc. All it needs is a good lead and usual action movie stuff like people have making for decades. Making a decent 7/10 movie out of this should be in the bag and for some reason they failed it. Feels like they spent their entire budget on getting a big name actress. Hashimoto Kanna definitely has it in her make it work but she doesn't really match the character's vibe. Nobody expects her to pull the action scenes like Keanu Reeves but this was absymal. Cuts and camera work making the heavy lifting with unnecessary CGI teleporting scenes etc.

Writing is the only thing this movie is somewhat decent at. They managed to merge first few arcs in a rather episodic manga in a sensible manner. I didn't liked the addition of the romantic subplot but that is expected at this point.

Other characters were doing okay jobs with my only complaint being the Yakuza boss constantly making dad jokes have too much screen time and he is not a very impactful character let alone the main villain. Might be another big name actor they are trying to get bang for their buck.

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Frankly, a mess

All I can say is yikes. This movie was really all over the place. I get the feeling there were a lot of different ideas going into it that just didn't end up fitting in the end. I'm certain a lot of the things I'm about to critique are things done for artistic distinction or some other reasonable sounding excuse, but I'm here to tell you whether I liked the movie, so that's what I'm going to do.

I didn't. I didn't like the movie. I was very excited for the movie; I thought the premise was great! (The premise was adapted from a manga, so we can't even give them credit for that, though.) What I got was some of the worst of Jdrama and some extra bonus garbage just for fun.

Firstly, a lot of the usual: egregious overacting, intentionally shoddy effects, awkward layout and timing, and lackluster comedy. It feels like they're trying to make an anime, everything cartoony and exaggerated. The problem is, that style just doesn't translate into the live action.

But, okay. That's Jdrama. We're used to that. Why the low score? Well, dear reader, let me impart some wisdom. In order to distinguish themselves as a creative talent, artists will take risks in their work in the hopes of producing something new and exciting. In many cases, this is the birth of something amazing, a new genre or an acclaimed masterpiece. In other cases, you're left with something that makes you wince a little bit, something you're sure probably shouldn't exist. Here we are.

Violent Action made a couple of baffling directorial and editorial choices which are immediately noticeable and immediately off-putting. They won't. Stop. Cutting. It feels like there's ten new shots every second. Not only are the cuts fast, they're disorienting. They camera bounces around room, cutting rapidly between closeup and wide shots, moving so quick I felt out of breath just watching it. It was the worst during action scenes. I'm certain I didn't comprehend a majority of what was probably (maybe) a decently choreographed fight sequence because I was too busy trying to figure out what was going on. And this isn't even a Liam-Neeson-shaky-cam-ten-shots-to-get-over-a-fence situation. It's just crazy fast, which as I've just learned is way worse.

There is a tonal dissonance with the pacing of the editing, the intense action scenes, and the general silliness the movie is shooting for (heh, shooting). We go from nauseatingly quick "assassinations" to jokes about bulletproof wigs and bad cooking. It feels out of place. Pick a side: cool or funny. You can't have both.

You may have noticed I put quotations around "assassinations." How observant of you. Allow me to explain. None of the supposed hits felt like assassinations at all. Perhaps they technically are (the definition is just surprise murder, basically), but it doesn't fit the connotation ascribed to that word. We don't get any poisoning, sniping from the next building over, sneaking around in the dead of night. Instead it's more like premeditated murder. Frankly, I think assassinations are less violent than murder, which ironically would have helped them hit the silly vibe they were going for, instead of the weird hybrid they ended up with.

So, what about the story? Uh... right, the story. What about the story? Um... I sure it had one. Well, it's all a bit hazy but... I guess there was a villain, some henchman, yadda yadda, so on and so forth. It was forgettable, okay. Point made.

So, to wrap things up. Acting: bad. Directing: bad. Sound track: meh. Action: I literally couldn't tell. Overall: yikes. I don't recommend this movie.

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