fatalgoff

OK so we've all heard the plot before, but you've never seen anything like this! Miike (Audition/Ichi) gives us his personal twist on the spaghetti western genre. If you cross Django/Trinity/Fistful of Dollars et al/The Unforgiven, with Kung Fu Hustle, with Anime, with a Kurasawa samurai movie, with Lone Wolf, with Shakespeare, and throw in a healthy helping of humour, bloodshed, drama and symbolism, you'll be halfway to following this movie. The largely Japanese cast all speak in broken English (some better than others), so I found the subtitles option on my DVD to be handy at times. Tarantino cameos as Ringo, a gunslinger at the start of the movie in a sequence that is almost comic book in look. Personally I enjoy both spaghetti westerns and samurai movies and this film had me engaged from the opening credits. Personally I'd rather have seen it in Japanese with subtitles but that's me. If you want a couple of hours of fun I don't think you'll go far wrong with this one.

If life is like a box of chocolates, why do I get all the NUTS?

Released a few years ago in Thailand on DVD the film stars Y. Lee, K.Koh, K.Mok, B. Chan (no credits for rest of cast). 78 minutes. Four youngsters (who look about 7-10 years old) live and work in a restaurant, where they are also trained in martial arts by two bickering (definitely camp) owners. The boys are called Little Rambo, Little Chuck (Norris), Little Bruce (Lee) and Little Jacky (Chan). The film concerns a mix up over a roll of secret film which a Chinese mafia gang is buying from a Japanese gang. A young girl and her older sister get involved and when the gang attack them the boys come to their assistance…the boys all become infatuated with the little girl. There's a hilarious chapter when the gangsters disguise themselves as hopping vampire ghosts and the boys have to fight them. Things get worse when the girls are kidnapped and the boys go to their rescue. The last chapter is nearly all action fighting. Watching kids fighting grown men seemed rather strange but when one of the boys was thrown through a plate glass window…I thought what the !!!!!! Not sure a film like this would be made nowadays, but amongst all the comedic moments (and there are plenty), there are some really quite impressive fights and stunts. Little Bruce has a great nun chuck scene, where he uses the weapon to great effect (to think that pre DVD, people used to search out uncut VHS tapes of Enter The Dragon just to see Bruce Lee's full nun chuck scene!). Another boy fights with what looks like two toilet plungers!. The nun chuck scene and the whole concept of little kids battling full grown men, may be the reason this film never got a wide release.