Assassin Ran (Japan 2016)

Rating: *
Review Date: 7/14/17
Cast: Sasa Handa

Dreadfully dull and impossible to follow without subtitles. As far as I can tell, Sasa Handa is an assassin who has been double-crossed. She meets a guy on the beach one day and has sex with him a couple of times before they try to kill each other. They also sit in a car and talk A LOT while driving past the same locations over and over.

The movie has no budget to speak of and the production values are exceedingly low. The lighting is bad and the video has a distracting and weird looking motion blur effect. The live audio doesn't sound very good, and the video is often out of focus. The visual effects are embarrassingly awful, and Ms. Handa's big assassination scene is actually shown twice. For an assassin, she's not particularly good with guns, as it takes her 44 rounds to drop five stationary and unarmed targets at point-blank range. This also means that each Glock she uses holds at least 22 rounds. Obviously not a lot of thought or care went into the development of that sequence, and we're treated to it twice! The other action scenes fare better, but are still bland, confusing, cringe-worthy, and poorly executed (just like the sex scenes). The only nice things I can say about the movie are that the beaches are pretty and Ms. Handa's perfectly styled hair is beautiful.