Review: Geisha Assassin

Go Ohara, the action director for 2005’s Death Trance and 2008’s Onechanbara: Zombie Bikini Squad, would seem to be the perfect candidate to direct a simply-premised action film of his own. So when word came out last year that he was working on a project called “Geisha vs. Ninjas”, genre fans were understandably excited by all the schlocky possibilities. A goofy title like that goes a long way when it comes to getting free publicity, and the film was quickly picked up by distributor Well Go USA for a North American DVD release under the more accurate, but less fun title, Geisha Assassin. Unfortunately, sometimes even low expectations are hard to live up to. I’m not quite sure which is the greater offense: the low-quality (yet still way overpriced) DVD or the sloppiness of the film itself, but one way or another anyone who actually buys this will most likely end up disappointed.

The film begins in earnest as a geisha girl named Kotono (Minami Tsukui) tracks down the mysterious samurai that she personally witnessed murder her father when she was just a child. He claims not to even remember who her father is, and when she finally prods him into attacking, it seems obvious that she’s completely overmatched. He takes his leave of her a few parries and a ruined umbrella later, with two samurai goons waiting in the wings. After she dispatches of the first duo, she chases after the elusive samurai, but is repeatedly blocked by new opponents along the way. Each has a completely different fighting style—a scenario that should be familiar to anyone that’s played a video game with boss battles—and during her journey flashbacks retell the story of her father’s obsession with a special sword that nobody wants to be burdened with. But frankly, that part of the story is never really clarified and ends up being more of a distraction than anything.

Young actress Minami Tsukui didn’t have much theatrical combat experience when she won the role of Kotono in an audition of about 2,000 girls, but she’s very athletic and has training in various forms of dance. As a result, she has a really unique, lightning-quick style of movement that’s pretty interesting to watch, but not particularly convincing as many of her blows obviously miss by a mile. She does have the uncanny ability to look cool in any contorted position though, making her a graceful badass of sorts. Having joined up with action-focused talent agency Japan Action Enterprise she’s obviously interested in pursuing more action roles in the future, and with a bit more training she’ll definitely be one to watch for years to come.

Unfortunately, Tsukui is pretty much the only bright spot in what amounts to a forgettable B-movie with sub-par effects and an incomprehensible narrative. It’s kind of hard to mess up a simple “You killed my father!” revenge flick, but having characters yammer on about a back-story that makes no sense to begin with is certainly one way to go about it. Well Go USA’s awful English subtitling job—one of the worst I’ve seen on a US release in years—is partially to blame for this, but the story is full of odd contradictions and completely pointless diversions either way. The movie itself clocks in at only 80 minutes, but even that feels about 30 minutes too long with all the yapping. Do yourself and all the rest of us a favor: skip this one completely and help put a stop to the “Western genre fans like total crap!” mentality filmmakers and distributors seem to have lately. Sometimes there’s a fine line between cheesy movies that are fun and cheesy movies that are just flat-out bad, and Geisha Assassin is planted firmly on the wrong side of it.

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  International Trailer - Geisha Assassin (2008) [English-subtitled]
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  Trailer - Geisha Assassin (2008)
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• Two trailers for “Geisha Assassin”
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  Production completed on Go Ohara’s “Geisha Assassin”
  Posted: July 24, 2008