Gun Crazy: Episode 1 - A Woman from Nowhere

Yet another remake of "Fistful of Dollars", Sergio Leone's remake of Kurosawa's "Yojimbo" (suggested by the novel 'Red Harvest').

This one is strictly a B-Movie; taken as that, it is rather enjoyable. the direction is crisp, the acting full of verve, the limitations of its 'direct-to-video' photography well-handled.

The weakness of the film is in the disastrous decision to marry the 'fistful'/'yojimbo' plot to a sub-plot from Leone's 'Once Upon a Time in the West'. Although leone directed both 'Fistful' and 'West', his motivations behind the two films couldn't be anymore different. The 'Man With No Name' (Eastwood) is a borderline socio-path with a soft spot for broken families. Harmonica (Chaeles Bronson) is obsessed with his own broken family, and obsessed with revenge. These two characters would not have had much to do with each other. In order to bring them together, 'Gun Crazy' has to twist it's plot and complicate it until we lose track of which story we're actually following.

But this is a B-Movie after all, and filled with action and silliness; it's entertaining on that level, just don't expect anything more.

The story of "A Woman From Nowhere" is rather simple and pretty much adapted right out of a Eastwood Spaghetti Western: A mysterious stranger comes into a lawless town run by a kingpin and starts shooting up the place. Even the opening credits and music have that spaghetti feel: Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone would be proud. The really interesting twists are that the stranger is a beautiful (!) woman, Saki (Ryoko Yonekura) on a Harley, and the location is in a town somewhere in Japan.

In this actioner, there's a considerable amount of gunplay, some of it good, some predictable, and other spots somewhat hokey, but it's a whole lot of fun. Ryoko handles her guns with believability and aplomb and gives the thugs their due. It wasn't much of an acting challenge for her as it was a physical challenge, but she handled things very well. She shows her acting skills much more as Otsu in the NHK drama, "Musashi."

I'd highly recommend film if you're a Ryoko Yonekura fan (which I adoringly am) and/or a "girls with guns" movie fan and it does hold up to repeated viewings. To me, there's something eminently and inexplicably appealing about "girls with guns" movies like "La Femme Nikita" and "The Long Kiss Goodnight." And to have a gorgeous gal like Ryoko starring in it as well is just gobs of icing on the cake.

Silly, simplistic, and short, GUN CRAZY (VOLUME 1: A WOMAN FROM NOWHERE) goes nowhere.

This brief (just over sixty minutes) tale isn't so much inspired by the classic spaghetti Westerns as it is a rip-off of Sam Raimi's THE QUICK & THE DEAD (his admitted homage to the spaghetti Westerns) brought into a contemporary setting. In QUICK & DEAD, Sharon Stone's character seeks revenge against the dastardly sheriff (played by Gene Hackman) who, when she was but an urchin, placed the fate of her father (a brief cameo by Gary Sinise) in her hands; she accidentally shot him through the head. In GUN CRAZY, Saki (played by the nimble Ryoko Yonekura) seeks revenge against the dastardly Mr. Tojo (played with minimalist appeal by Shingo Tsurumi), who, when she was but an urchin, placed the fate of her father in her hands; she let her foot slip off the clutch, and dear ole dad was drawn and quartered by a semi truck. The only significant difference, despite the settings, is the fact that Tojo sadistically cripples Saki with … well, I won't spoil that for you in case you decide to watch it.

In short, Saki – a pale imitation of the Clint Eastwood's 'Man With No Name' – rides into the town – basically, there's a auto shop and a tavern alongside an American military base, so I guess that suffices for a town – corrupted by Tojo, the local crimelord with a ridiculously high price on his head for reasons never explained or explored. Confessing her true self as a bounty hunter, Saki takes on the local gunmen in shootouts whose choreography bares more than a passing similarity to the works of Johnny To and John Woo. Of course, by the end of the film Saki has endured her fair amount of torture at the hands of the bad guys, but she rises to the occasion – on her knees, in a laughable attempt at a surprise ending – and vanquishes all of her enemies with a rocket launcher.

Don't ask where she gets the rocket launcher. Just watch it for yourself. Try not to laugh.

The image quality is average for the DVD release. There is a grainy quality to several sequences, but, all in all, this isn't a bad transfer. The sound quality leaves a bit to the imagination at times, but, again, it isn't a bad transfer.

Rather, it's a bad film.

Director Atsushi Muroga's 'Gun Crazy: Episode 1 - A Woman from Nowhere' is a calculated attempt at cult coolness that admittedly, on paper, sounds rather promising: hot female bounty-hunter Saki ( Ryoko Yonekura), clad in leather and brandishing a pair of over-sized hand cannons, rides into a lawless 'town' in order to settle an old score with evil gang boss Mr. Tojo (Shingo Tsurumi). Styled after the classic spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone, the film features a suitably barren landscape, slow motion gun battles, menacing stares in close-up, and even a Morricone inspired score (complete with whistling).

Sadly, Muroga doesn't quite fulfill the potential of his premise thanks to a rather cheap shot-on-video look, the lack of convincing gun-play from his star, and not nearly enough of the insane OTT violence one might reasonably expect from a Japanese film called Gun Crazy. Sure, we get the guns, but there just ain't enough of the 'crazy' on display for my liking (the film's closing minutes offer the most outrageous moment, but it's all a case of 'too little, too late').

If it had been up to me, I'd have given Saki a wider variety of weaponry throughout (and a lot less clothing), made her take at least one unnecessary shower, included a lot more in the way of bloody squib shoot-em-up action, and featured a climactic battle in Mr. Tojo's booby trapped lair against an army of robot ninjas, albino kung fu dwarfs, zombie gimps, and a pair of lesbian conjoined-twin assassins! (okay, okay, that might be going a bit too far, but you get the idea...).

5.5 out of 10, rounded up to 6 for IMDb.

Solid, no frills, nineties Japanese gun action. Definitely enjoyable. I liked the main character. The gun action is weak by modern standards. And there's hardly any ornamentation to the story. Except for a couple smirks from the MC. So it's a seven. But it should be on your list if you're looking for old dubbed action. Just maybe not in the top dozen.