Woodyanders
Sweet young high school student Ami (played with tremendous spunk by the adorable Minase Yashiro) has her life turned topsy turvy after both her brother and his friend are killed by sadistic bullies. After losing her left arm to said bullies, two garage mechanics create a machine gun appendage for Ami so she can exact a harsh revenge.Writer/director Noboru Iguchi keeps the enjoyably absurd story hurtling along at a brisk pace, brings a blithely twisted tongue-in-cheek comic book sensibility to the deliciously demented premise (the whole sequence with the lethal drill bra in particular is simply sidesplitting!), pulls out all the exciting insane stops for the action set pieces, and even manages a few moments of touching humanity amidst all the gloriously gonzo carnage. Best of all, Iguchi pours on the outrageous over-the-top graphic violence with lip-smacking unhinged glee and gusto: Geysers of blood squirt and spurt everywhere (the red stuff actually sprays all over the camera lens in a few scenes!), limbs are hacked off, heads are completely obliterated, bodies are riddled with bullets, a hapless chef is forced to eat his own fingers, one poor guy has nails pounded into his face, and torsos have massive holes blown in them. Asami brings a winning sense of raw ferocious grit to her role as the tough and determined Miki while Nobuhiro Nishihara cuts an appropriately hateful figure as vicious head bully Sho Kimura. A berserk treat.
tdrish
I loved this movie! In the tradition of Kill Bill, we have an Asian version of the over-the-top blood and guts, Tarrantino style revenge thriller. It's going to take a prayer and a half to stop The Machine Girl, who is out for blood after her brother was wrongfully thrown off of a building. Her brother owed money, and was in debt, and everyone knows that by murdering the person who owes you money, well, that's the best way to get your money back, right? The movie does not fall short of any man or woman who dares to get in the way of this pyst off little girl! She loses her hand in a battle where she is outnumbered, and is helped by a unsuspecting source that wishes to help her get healed up, and also...better prepare herself for what's to come. Make no mistake, she was a very good ninja before...but now, she's out for an unthinkable revenge, and where her hand used to be, now rests pounds of steel, rapid firing bullets, and a blast of fury! Their only salvation from The Machine Girl, is that she runs out of bullets, because she sure won't run out of moving targets. The violence is campy yet stylish at times, more then often just plain silly, but that's the type of movie in its genre. It's almost non stop action, fused with humor, and plenty of blood to satisfy the gore hounds. It's also the only movie I've seen in my life that has a drill bra scene ( got your attention, eh?) Get it while it's s(hot)!
ferbs54
I am very pleased to report that Japanese special FX master (and occasional director) Yoshihiro Nishimura is now a very solid 3 for 3 with me. In 2001's "Suicide Club," Nishimura's splattering gore FX gave this ultimately bewildering story just the visceral shocks needed to put it over. In 2008's "Tokyo Gore Police," which saw Nishimura also taking the reins of director, his gore FX entered the realm of high art, with many characters transformed into gushing, human blood geysers and sanguinary fountains. (These gushing blood FX, perhaps inspired by Akira Kurosawa's shocking finale of 1962's "Sanjuro," could conceivably be deserving of some sort of Nipponese patent or copyright!) And now...2008's "The Machine Girl," which, if not quite as bloody as "Tokyo Gore Police" (but what film IS?!?!), incorporates the FX more cleverly, and into a more endearing story line, as well. Personally, I loved it!In the film, the viewer meets a pretty high school girl named Ami, winningly portrayed by Minase Yashiro. An orphan for some years, Ami lives with her younger brother, Yu, with whom she is very close. "Violence doesn't solve anything...it only hurts people," Ami tells Yu early on, but her attitude quickly changes when Yu and his buddy are killed by the gang of Sho (hissingly well played by young Nobuhiro Nishihara), the odious son of the local Kimura yakuza leader. Quickly going into vengeance mode, Ami handily disposes of her first two victims, after which she laughingly runs down the street, proclaiming "I'm a demon! I turned into a demon! I'll remain a demon until I kill every last one of Yu's enemies!" But more trouble looms, as the yakuzas capture poor Ami and, in a grisly sequence, chop off her fingers and then her entire left arm! Fortunately, the local mechanic and his wife--the parents of Yu's late friend--take pity on the mutilated girl, and construct a nice prosthesis for her new stump...a prosthesis that just happens to be one seriously heavy-duty machine gun!Perhaps inspired by the "Planet Terror" segment of Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino's "Grindhouse" (2007), in which Rose McGowan's Cherry Darling character loses her right leg and is fitted with a high-powered machine gun prosthesis, "The Machine Girl" tells a simple story of vengeance, but one that is exceptionally well done. In the lead, Minase is absolutely adorable in her white blouse and pleated skirt, and could easily pass as one of those 54 innocent-looking schoolgirls who leap onto the tracks in "Suicide Club." But just watch her lip curl into a snarl as she fires off her "arm" or chastises her foes! It is a wonderful performance from Ms. Yashiro, who is certainly required to do more physical stunt work and give five times as many line readings as the kick-ass character portrayed by Eihi Shiina in "Tokyo Gore Police"; hard to believe that this was Minase's first role as an actress! But then again, ALL the players here are just terrific, and the colorful characters that they portray should linger long in the memory. Special kudos to Asami, who plays the supertough Miki (the mechanic's wife); to Kentaro Shimazu, who plays the yakuza boss; and especially to (another single-name actress) Honoka, who plays his even nastier wife, as lethal and sadistic a Dragon Lady beeyotch as has ever been shown on screen. And of course, kudos to writer and director Noboru Iguchi, for his colorful story and incredibly stylish and dynamic helming of the film. I have become an instant fan of his, and not just because the man shares my birthday (June 28th, if you care to send gifts); I look forward now to someday seeing some of his other nonporno fare, such as "RoboGeisha," "Mutant Girls Squad," "Zombie Ass" and "Dead Sushi" (you've gotta love those titles!).But let's get down to the meat of the matter. Putting aside all questions of story line, acting, fashion and style, "howzabout those shock FX?," all you gorehounds must be asking. Well, as in "Tokyo Gore Police," the carnage on screen is so UNrealistic and over the top that any queasiness that might otherwise be engendered is somehow averted. But boy, is that carnage ever up there! Thus, the audience is treated to the awesome spectacle of one punk getting his face machine-gun blasted away, bit by bit (a truly staggering effect); hands cut off; Ami getting her arm tempura'ed in boiling oil (played for laffs, strangely enough); a bloody head in a pot of miso soup; a knife blade going into the back of a woman's skull and out of her mouth; a bloody dousing using a decapitated torso; finger sushi (don't ask!); another woman getting a knife through the top of her noggin, only to be then raped by two yakuza henchmen (surely, the film's sickest moment); a foot-wide, see-through hole in the torso of a machine-gun blasted ninja; those razor-sharp throwing stars (shuriken, I believe they're called) slicing a man to pieces; nail-in-the-face torture; chainsawings; a mace with a steel trap, aka a "flying guillotine"; and, most incredibly, a metal bra with twin power drills attached (possibly inspired by Ursula Andress' bullet-spitting bra in 1965's cult classic "The Tenth Victim," and possibly the inspiration for Sofia Vergara's machine gun brassiere in Robert Rodriguez' upcoming "Machete Kills"). As you can see, truly, one wild and crazy entertainment package, but in all, quite winning and ingratiating, and perfect fodder for a possible sequel. Personally, I would love to see Chloe Grace Moretz' Hit-Girl character from "Kick-Ass" take a trip to Japan and team up for some serious butt kicking with Ami, but I suppose we ALL have our little fantasies, right?
Enchorde
Recap: Yu is bullied by the son of a yakuza leader and his gang, to the extent that he is actually killed. His only remaining family, his big sister Ami vows to take revenge. That quest don't go too well though, resulting in the loss of Ami's forearm. Fortunately she can attach a machine gun to the stump, and the quest for revenge can begin again.Comments: Well, the standard is set right away, so you will know what to expect just by watching the first few minutes. And the standard is low. Sure, I didn't expect any award winning drama in any way, but the extent of blood, gore and violence is so over the top it is beyond silly. And then it continues on for 90 more minutes, in the same style, more or less over the top.To make a slasher movie like this actually demands quite a fine balance. It should be outrageously gory, but it loses most of its edge if it goes over the top, past a certain hard defined line. Machine Girl is so ridiculously beyond that line so it becomes dull and repetitive. But that's a matter of taste I suppose.3/10
