Score

Score rips off Reservoir Dogs, Hard Target and other action movies and it does it so blatantly it makes me puke from my rectum. It's stupid as hell. It does deserve some credibility for the action as it is bloody and fun but urgh. It is so annoying. Recommended if you like movies that devoid original thought.

SCORE (1995) is a derivative Japanese crime film, borrowing liberally from, among others, HARD-BOILED, HARD TARGET, RESERVOIR DOGS, TRESPASS, NATURAL BORN KILLERS and THE GETAWAY. It's a fast-paced, violent, old-fashioned (in a good way) caper thriller that makes up for an extremely low budget by fast-cutting, imaginative staging of action, judicious casting, and lots of shootouts, fights, chases, greed, betrayal and frenzied, bloody agony.

SCORE is set in the U.S., but was largely shot in the Philippines (the police cars have `Manila's Finest' printed on them). The main character, Chance, looks like a Japanese Quentin Tarantino with his square face and bulldog features, and heads a team of jewel robbers waiting for their payoff in a massive abandoned factory. There is a psychotic highway robber and his crazy female accomplice (straight out of NATURAL BORN KILLERS) who dog the jewel robbers. The male psycho has a fixation on Doc Holliday and the O.K. Corral and insists on referring to the jewel thieves as the Clantons.

Despite its budget limitations and blatant rip-offs of so many better films, SCORE boasts the kind of speed, grit, color, and imaginative violent outbursts that used to grace so many of the grade-B crime films that Hollywood (and Hong Kong) used to produce on a regular basis.

A cheap and cheerless heist movie with poor characterisation, lots of underbite style stoic emoting (think Chow Yun Fat in A Better Tomorrow) and some cheesy clichés thrown into an abandoned factory ready for a few poorly executed flying judo rolls a la John Woo. Even the squibs look awful. At no point in the proceedings does it look remotely like America. Three wonky old cars do not a country make.The Mustang even has a wobbly right front wheel. The plot, such as it is, is so derivative and predictable that the ending is like a mercy killing. It couldn't come soon enough. Even the jewellery from the robbery looks like the cheapest junk costume jewellery available. The awful dialogue and hopeless overacting by everyone who gets shot top off a real waste of space and time. Worth watching if you want to know how not to make a cliché-ridden low budget movie.

Score isn't anything you haven't seen before but it is a lot of fun, it's like a cross between Reservoir Dogs and John Woo's Hard Boiled. If you're a fan of over the top and bloody action movies then you'll likely enjoy Score, i know i did. The actors chew the scenery, the main protagonist has a mullet (I've never seen a Japanese man own a mullet before), the gun fights are crazy with people pumping multiple rounds in to each other with blood spraying everywhere and all logic goes out of the window. One character gets shot in the stomach, then the shoulder and then a couple of scenes later he's sprinting down a hill like he's chasing a wheel of cheese. Then later on he gets blasted in the arm and chest with a shotgun and then shot in the same shoulder as before with a crossbow and then hit again with a shotgun in the back but he's still alive and able to drive a car!!! I really enjoyed this movie, it reminded me of a time when action movies were made for adults with blood, swearing and adult themes. Nowadays most action movies are PG-13 crap. Highly recommended for fans of violent action movies, you'll have a good time.

I watched many Japanese Films recently mostly Action/Yakuza Films or Horror. Score is one of the best Action Films from the Japanese Action genre, Its clear this movie stole his Style from John Woo Films like Hard Target or Hard Boiled or Tarantinos Reservoir Dogs, they are even scenes in Score who are almost exactly 1:1 the same, Its up to you how you look at it. Is this a outrageous copy or does this Film appreciate John Woo and Tarantino ? I don't care really, this Film was a lot Fun, Fast Paced and many bloody Shootouts and One-Liners. Obviously this Film is Low Budget but the End Result was really good. As I write this Review, there only 227 users who seen/voted this Film, this Film should definitely more known especially under Action Fans.