During recent years, an effort in the Japanese movie industry to come up with action movies of quality have become quite intense, with films like “Baby Assassin” and “The Fable” being some of the most notable. Isao Yukisada attempts his hand in probably the entry with the biggest budget in the category, with “Revolver Lily” also implementing the current favorite of ‘girls-with-guns' trope.
Revolver Lily is screening at Toronto Japanese Film Festival
The story is based on the homonymous novel by Kyo Nagaura, and takes place in 1924. Yuri, an ex-assassin who seems to have carried out 57 assassinations in the past, has now gone underground and runs a small bar in Tokyo. While there, she stumbles upon Shinta, an orphan whose family has been murdered, and his father has employed him to find her, just before he died. The teenage boy seems to hold the key to a large sum of money reported missing by the Imperial Japanese Army, who is on his heels.
Shinta asks Yuri for help, and she needs to become an assassin once more, in order to protect the boy and to keep the money from falling into the hands of a faction that wants to use it to plunge the country into war. Soon, however, they have a whole army chasing after them, headed by a paranoid murderer, Minamishi. Yoshiaki Iwami eventually helps the duo, who soon find a number of other allies. Their opponents, however, are definitely many more, while Yuri's past also seems to chase her.
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Isao Yukisada directs a film that shares many similarities with Kim Jee-woon's works, particularly “Age of Shadows”. In that fashion, the eye candy approach is dominant here, with many impressive set pieces, the costumes, hair and make-up, the coloring and the SFX being all top notch. Keisuke Imamura's cinematography captures everything with artistry, cementing the prowess in that regard. Add to that that Haruka Ayase as Yuri looks sexy and dangerous, Hiroki Hasegawa as Yoshiaki appealingly noble, and Kavka Shishido and Kotone Furukawa (who seems to be everywhere lately) following the same path as Ayase, and you have a movie that is pleasant to the eye on a number of levels.
The stylized action, again in the style of Kim Jee-woon, this time more of “A Bittersweet Life” kind, is quite entertaining throughout, despite its evident lack of realism, in an approach that occasionally moves in comic book paths. Perhaps due to this, Yukisada and the script-writer Tatsuo Kobayashi, tried to include a number of historical-like elements, with the fight between the factions of the Japanese army being the main one, and some more dramatic ones, having to do with Yuri's past. The first one somewhat works, although it also results in too many characters and side stories appearing in the movie, but the second definitely does not.
Probably in an effort to humanize Yuri and to highlight her as a mother and a woman, apart from a cold-blooded murdered, the narrative includes even more arcs, which, this time, take a rather melodramatic path that does not work particularly well here. Add to that the ever-present lagging in Japanese films, partially here due to the aforementioned two elements, and you have the most significant issues of the movie. Ayase and Hasegawa portray everything that was asked of them nicely, Hiroya Shimizu as Minamishi looks cool and dangerous, but they are not enough in this case.
As such, “Revolver Lily” emerges as a mixed bag, a film that definitely deserves a watch for its set pieces, visuals and action scenes, but will disappoint anyone who looks beyond that. Perhaps a smaller duration, which would allow the story to focus on the action would have made the whole thing better.
