Gun Woman (2014)

Best advice for this film is: read the summary below (no spoilers).  If, based on that, you have ANY reservations AT ALL, avoid.

If you aren't put off, you should probably still avoid, but for different reasons.

There is a gun.  There is a woman.  I guess we know now how they came up with the title

Gun Woman (2014, directed by Kurando Mitsutake) tells a vaguely familiar story.  A depraved maniac tortures, rapes and murders a young woman.  Her husband, a brilliant surgeon, decides to gain revenge.  Realising his quarry is taking steps to protect himself and only now indulges his predilections in a sealed, guarded facility and only with fresh corpses, the surgeon concocts a plan.  He kidnaps a young woman, imprisons her and trains her to be a lethal fighting machine.  He then explains she's going to be drugged to appear dead, offered to the target as 'fresh meet' and when she recovers consciousness, she'll arm herself with the weapons he will have concealed in cavities he's cut into her living flesh.

Nice.

Gun Woman is not really a horror film, or even a thriller - just a piece of low grade gory 'erotica' with lots of sadism, nudity and blood.  It isn't as intriguing as the premise (which makes it sound like a grislier version of La femme Nikita - it isn't) suggests. The plot is silly - I mean, even sillier than the summary above suggests. 

It could - perhaps - have been an interesting film, if you had a sense the writers and directors were trying to say something about the desire for revenge can corrode the morality and humanity of those who seek it.  But there isn't any sense of that.  It really is - to my eyes - just about a vengeful man who really wants to kill a necrophiliac.

The acting it ripe.  The main character is played by a Japanese erotic actress known as Asumi.  Her role is mute - the character never utters a word in the film and you can't help but wonder - perhaps unkindly - if this was a deliberate choice on the part of the film makers to avoid burdening her with lines in addition to her other duties of being chained to walls in her underwear (which, mysteriously, stays white and crisp throughout her ordeal), refusing to eat ramen and then suddenly metamorphosing into a skilled killing machine completely down with tearing her own flesh open.  Young people today, eh?  They'll do anything for a thrill.

Azumi spends a lot of the film essentially doing this.

The only other significant roles in the film,  Noriaki Kamata as the perverted sadistic playboy and Kairi Naritahe as the vengeance crazed doctor are adequate for their shallowly, clunky written roles.

And, to save those just looking for some sexy thrills, the film peculiarly untitillating.  It clearly wanted to be, but it isn't - surprisingly, given the amount of Asumi's real estate on display.  She spends large amounts of the film in an artisitcally dampened slip and panties, and the last sequence nude, apart from a sheer layer of blood - her own and others - but it all quickly becomes rather dull.  Take my word for it - the still images make it look a lot more enticing than it is.

Story wise, there are way too many "Uh, what?" moments stop you suspending disbelief to enjoy the nonsense.   Why would a highly trained bodyguard go into a fight in high heels and a miniskirt?  Why would this paranoid pervert only have a couple of guards around him, anyway?  Why couldn't the mastermind figure out a less elaborate plan, as the hyped defences of the White Room seem pretty flimsy?

Dressed to kill: Asumi and Jennifer Mullaney in totally sensible battlefield fashion

The staging and special effects indifferent.  Mastermind trains Megumi from party girl drug addict to super-assassin in a warehouse, without much more than a mat to practice rolls on.  But, hey, how much more of that fancy equipment do you REALLY need?  Even more disappointing, when we finally get to the secluded, heavily guarded facility where the target fulfills his desires, it looks like a shabby office building and the sicko gets five minutes alone with a corpse on a gurney in a tiny cubby hole.  You'd think the son of a multi-millionaire would have gone for something classier and more luxurious.

There IS a lot of gore (try ripping a gun out of your chest without a bit of blood being spilt) but some crucial moments just look cheap and fake - as Mastermind performs surgery on Mayumi's chest, we can see the prosthetic plate wobbling  - and this makes it hard to do anything other than giggle.  Overall, it is likely too nasty for many but as you don't identify with the characters it isn't harrowing.

Asumi wishes mastermind had included some body armour in her equipment

And I amn't even going to go into the creepiness of the kidnapping and torturing of Megumi in order to make her into something better and stronger.  There just isn't time enough, and the film certainly isn't trying hard enough, to make that worthwhile.  And that is the final verdict on this film - it just isn't worthwhile.  It's nasty, which will dissuade the less hardcore viewers, but not in a way that will satisfy gore fans.

STAR RATING: NO STARS