Upon graduation, highly trained teenage assassins Chisato and Mahiro are informed by upper management that they will need to hold down “normal” jobs as a cover and — even worse — they’ll be forced to share an apartment. However, after an unfortunate run-in with a Yakuza member, the two must band together to survive an epic fight for their lives.
“Baby Assassins” has to be one of the laziest martial arts-laden movies I’ve seen. On the artwork for the Blu-ray, a critic exclaims, “Absolutely stellar fight sequences.” As a fellow critic, I will not slam this reviewer because they are entitled to their own opinion, just as I am, but I have to wonder, did they watch the same film I did? I find it hard to believe because the fight scenes I watched were not realistic on any practical level, and it was obvious that many of the actors were pulling their punches. I haven’t witnessed bad theatrics like this for a long time, and the rest of the movie mimics these lamentable spectacles.
Chisato (Akari Takaishi) and Mahiro (Saori Izawa) are two young women who have just graduated high school but unbeknownst to anyone else, they are also assassins. Hired because of their fresh faces and youthful looks, they fool everyone they come into contact with but have to maintain regular jobs to keep up appearances. They live together in a small apartment; Chisato is outgoing and enjoys meeting new people, while Mahiro is introverted and likes to stay in and watch videos on her phone. When they both start a new job together, a local Yakuza boss enters the restaurant with his son and starts bullying the staff with threats of kidnapping and sex trafficking, so Chisato eliminates both men and removes their bodies. When the dead Yakuza’s daughter Himari (Mone Akitani) learns of his fate, she takes it upon herself to track down and terminate both girls. Without the help of their employer, as this is a personal issue, they will have to go one-on-one with Himari and her gang if they hope to return to work the next day.
When “Baby Assassins” is not participating in poorly executed fight sequences and shootouts, it tries to present its story as a slice-of-life drama that never reaches its true potential. The fact that they’re both newly graduated high schoolers doesn’t help matters; it feels wrong, like they’re too young, whereas if the characters were in their low-to-mid twenties, it might have been more believable, but as it stands, the credibility factor is never within the bounds of possibility. There are too many scenes of the girls sitting around their apartment, playing with their phones, watching videos, and browsing the internet. While these scenes suggest the passing of time and that being an assassin is not a life of non-stop excitement, they come off as lazy and repetitious instead.
Both actors, Akari Takaishi and Saori Izawa, do the best they can with what they have, but that’s not saying much. They mope around their apartment or move at a snail’s pace when they are out on the streets, reiterating that an assassin’s life can be boring too. We get it. That aspect is hammered into our brains early on and continuously pummeled into our heads when no action transpires onscreen. When the action does occur, it is formulaic and derivative of better-produced martial arts features. “Baby Assassins” possesses a concept that could have had the desired result it so badly wants to attain; a dramatic thriller, sadly, it never reaches that crowning achievement as it is too self-absorbed in its own megalomania.
Now available on the martial arts streaming service Hi-YAH! and on Blu-ray™, DVD & Digital August 16th
