Karate Girl
Year: 2011
Director: Yoshikatsu Kimura
Rating: 6/10
I was expecting this Japanese offering to be a total low budget cheesy action
film with choreography that was amateurish and bumbling at best - but with
a title like Karate Girl I had to give it a shot. And it is in fact quite
low budget with no sets to speak of and it has a plot so predictable that
a child could figure out what was going to happen five minutes into the film.
But that wasn't really an issue with me because it has two women - well girls
really - who kick a lot of ass and they look good doing it.
The choreography is well done without the usual rapid speed editing and wires
that we are generally given today. They are the real deal and the moves they
display are very impressive with three-kick to the head moves and off the
wall into a kick and hitting multiple people with one sweep that are all
legit as far as I can tell - and the practices shown during the end credits
validate that.
The actress Rina Takeda who plays Ayaka was 20-years old at the time the
film was made had been training in karate since she was ten. The other actress
who is about 15 is Hina Tobimatsu and I can't find out anything about her
background but she is amazing. From IMDB she only has one other credit in
the same year while Rina has a number of film and TV credits up to the present
day. Between the two of them they leave a long trail of beaten and dead men
in their path. At a time when Hong Kong's Girls with Guns has long passed
peacefully away, this brings back memories of it - though there are no insane
stunts - just karate - but Rina is sort of Moon Lee like, small and cute,
while Hina could have a great career as a bad-ass female killer with a stone
and surly face that could give shivers. It is a shame if she is entirely
out of film. During those same end credits she finally gets to smile.
There is a plot here and a nice smidgeon of melodrama. The Kurenai style
of Karate has been passed down in the family for generations and a hostile
takeover from another karate school kills the Master, leaves his young daughter
for dead and takes away the even younger sister. But they don't get the black
belt - sort of like McDonalds taking over Carl's but not getting the special
sauce. We jump a number of years into the future - the fellow who did all
the evil deeds has created a killer elite that he contracts all over the
world and is training a "killer doll" young girl. They are looking for the
black belt that Ayaka (the left for dead daughter) still has - and you should
be able to take it from there. Nothing fancy here - a very obvious story
with some nice basic action. But watching Rina (in her short school skirt)
and Hina (dressed in black) is a fair amount of fun.