| Since returning to America
from my extended stint in Japan, I haven't written
any movie reviews. I've been meaning to get back
to them, but I wasn't sure what movie to start
with. Then I realized the answer was right in
front of me. What movie review should I write
after making my illustrious return? Why, Returner,
of course!
Returner is a movie that I have been wanting to view even
before I went to Japan almost three years ago.
The trailer showed many of my favorite elements
of the movie going experience. Ludicrous over-the-top
gun battles and pseudo kung fu? Check! Aliens
in awesome battle armor? Check! Things that go
boom? Check! Giant robots that are hidden in
human vehicles? Che… Well, no, they're
actually alien spaceships, but it's still pretty
sweet. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
The
story begins with a bewildering firefight between
a bunch of humans and some super-soldiers that
look like cybernetic crosses between the xenomorphs
from Alien and Predators from… Predator.
We are briefly introduced to the super-mega-adorable
Milli (Anne Suzuki, Snow Falling on Cedars) as
she must go back in time in a desperate attempt
to destroy the alien that first started this
terrible war…
After
the front credits roll and we get the dramatic
title card, the story switches to the present,
which isn't much more pleasant. On a cargo ship
in a bay off Japan, a very sinister deal is afoot.
Mizoguchi (Goro Kishitani of One
Missed Call),
a member of an extremely powerful Triad gang
syndicate from China, is inspecting a shipment
of young children that will be harvested for
their organs. Just to make sure that the audience
understands that Mizoguchi is very evil, he shoots
one of the children to make them shut up. Thankfully
for the children (and for the more squeamish
audience members), our hero Miyamoto (Takeshi
Kaneshiro, House of Flying Daggers), all decked
out in his Matrix costume, comes and kills with
great style and aplomb, managing to take out
almost all the gangsters—except Mizoguchi,
the one he wants to kill most. He has a vendetta
against the man, and a bad habit of letting him
slip through his fingers. At the critical moment
when Miyamoto is about to ice Mizoguchi, Milli,
who has just arrived via a Terminator-esque glowing
ball, makes a noise and takes the bullet meant
for Mizoguchi, who takes the opportunity to escape.
As
it turns out, Milli is fine—she has futuristic
armor that kept her safe. She blackmails Miyamoto
into helping her find the "Daggra"—a mysterious
and destructive alien force that will apparently
be starting an apocalyptic war in just a few
days. The Daggra crash-landed on a nearby mountain,
and Milli will do anything to find and destroy
it. Unfortunately, Mizoguchi is on the same trail—only
he wants the Daggra and its craft because of
its incredible destructive power. As Milli and
Miyamoto match wits with Mizoguchi and his monstrous
machinations, the future of all humankind hangs
in the balance—and, as is often the case
in these alien action extravaganzas, the Daggra
is not all that it appears to be…
The
story of Returner is fast-paced and filled with
a slapdash of ludicrousness. Much like how Japan
is famed for borrowing bits and pieces of culture
and technology from other nations and remaking
them for their own use, similarly Returner borrows
heavily from western movies—some of which
had also borrowed heavily from Japanese pop culture
in the first place. It's an advanced form of
entertainment recycling, and if recycling movie
plot elements saved the trees, Returner just
saved an entire forest. From the transforming
alien spacecraft ala the Japanese Transformers;
to the Matrix-style fashions, action sequences
and bullet-dodging; to the Terminator-derived
time-travel plot; to the alien and spacecraft
designs yanked from ID4 (including the "aliens-using-people-as-mouthpieces" ploy),
Returner is a gleeful potluck of sci-fi standbys
that, while sometimes leaning heavily on uninspired
derivation rather than inspired borrowing, is
nevertheless, in my opinion, very fun and even
exciting at times. The movie doesn't include
an original thought in its head, but for all
that it remains enjoyable in a dumb way.
And
it is dumb, no question. Plot holes open up almost
as big as some of the explosions (like why it
is that Mizoguchi can dodge bullets half the
time), and some plot elements simply aren't explained
at all, perhaps in the hopes that we won't ask
any questions. The characterizations aren't particularly
deep, either—Goro Kishitani's Mizoguchi
especially is comical in his shallowness. He
isn't human, he's just a cocky, violent sadist
who kills unthinkingly and only wants power.
There is really nothing to his character, though
Kishitani is kind of fun in the role. Kaneshiro
as Miyamoto comes off better, despite his critically
clichéd character. In my estimation, he
is fun to watch and injects a little life into
the warmed-over angst-filled hero. Suzuki's Milli
is the standout, however—her acting swings
from solid to stuck-up teenage grating, but she
is a likable actress that improves the material
by her presence. Miyamoto's cranky informant,
as portrayed by Kirin Kiki (who was also Momoko's
lovably insane grandmother in Kamikaze
Girls),
is the other standout, giving us a selfish, orally-fixated
consumeristic lady with the proverbial heart
of gold—it's just that her heart is usually
outranked by her stomach.
A
word must be said, however, about the numerous
Caucasian "actors" who populate the scenes of
the future, in a time wherein all the remaining
humans are holed up in Tibet. For whatever reason,
they all speak English, and none of them can
act. It literally seems like Toho just rounded
up the local English teachers in the area, threw
some costumes on them, and told them to have
at it, with predictably cheesy results. Anne
Suzuki has to speak English in these parts, and
she doesn't come off much better—her English,
while understandable, isn't good. However, at
least it looks like she's acting in the midst
of all the special effects warfare.
Concerning
those special effects, they're pretty good for
a Japanese feature. Some of the CGI work is about
the level of a Sci-Fi original production, but
occasionally it transcends its cheap roots and
looks respectably awesome. The aforementioned
transforming spaceships look fairly impressive,
as do some scenes of destruction. The animated
aliens, though, fail to impress most of the time.
Pyrotechnics are a mixed bag as well, and the
real explosions come off much better than the
computer generated ones.
A
word of warning—Returner is rather bloody,
and sometimes it can be jarring. There are numerous
gouts of blood during the gunfights in the present
timeline, and one of the future battles actually
features people getting blasted in half. This,
in addition to the grimly disturbing child murder
and body harvesting theme, makes Returner surprisingly
grim for its often breezy presentation. Because
of this, the film sometimes comes across as uneven.
Music,
much like the rest of the film, is a smorgasbord,
from surprisingly understated orchestral movements
to pulsing electronica beats to sappy piano pieces.
Most of the time it underscores the action fairly
well, but it never makes much of an impression.
Returner is rarely a surprise. It delivers what it came
to do, and not an iota more—but it has
a good time while it's at it. What's most surprising
about the film is that the writer/director, Takashi
Yamazaki, later went on the make the delightful
(and very sentimental) Always: Sunset on Third
Street and its sequel. But, from Returner's perspective,
that's looking into the future—and, if
you're open to a little grimness with your cheesy
action, that future will hopefully find a Returner DVD in your player. If nothing else, it is a
wonderful testament to Yamazaki's range. |
(3/5)