Features:
Description:
Inspired by La Femme Nikita, executed with low-budget slickness, and spiced with soft-core interludes, the Japanese series Zero Woman follows the exploits of a female assassin for a secret government agency. Natsuki Ozawa plays the hard-bitten nymph of an assassin in this 1995 episode, the second in the series. Slinking through the city in a little black dress (where does she hide her gun?), she chases after stolen stock certificates heisted from the mob by a trio of clueless street punks. Finding herself caught between sadistic gangsters, desperate street criminals, and a corrupt, double-crossing government official, she does what any self-respecting stone-cold killer would do: she goes hunting. Shot on high-definition video with a perpetually prowling low-angle camera, this production is a sleekly designed if at times clumsily executed thriller, crammed with slow-motion and skip-frame effects. It's also cruelly violent (watch that meat hook to the crotch!) and archly serious, a bleak, blood-spattered melodrama with an increasingly absurd escalation of nihilistic doom but nary a trace of irony or humor. Director Daisuke Gotoh becomes less flashy but more consistent in the next installment, Zero Woman: The Accused, but Ozawa (who launched the character in 1993) was replaced. It's the beginning of a tradition: after this film, no actress would play Zero Woman more than once. --Sean Axmaker
|
