Karate Girl

With the compulsory dramatic intro scene you immediately get to know the villain of the movie and the younger versions of the Karate Girls. Come again two Karate girls. Yes,two of them. And both who actually know Karate. The story is very simple. Yet the director thought it necessary to explain what Karate should be about in almost every talking scene. Even in some of the action scenes there seems to be too much talking. The action scenes are adequate but do look very choreographed. Sometimes far too slow and too much breaks during fights. Since the pace of the movie is quite slow it only makes the movie even seem slower. It surely doesn't help that the movie takes itself far too seriously. Especially when the acting is real bad.It is a shame really that the director failed to put in some real excitement. The trailer for this movie looks promising. But like most trailers they put in the best scenes from the movie in there. So in this case you are better off watching the trailer.

The worst part about being a Rina Takeda fan is that you will never find a movie properly showcasing her abilities, because nobody ever made one (and, by now, probably never will).

She's awesome. Very talented, and a great screen presence, which are the most important traits of an action star. But she just doesn't have any writers/directors/producers caring to capitalize on that. High Kick Girl was a nice if deeply flawed first effort. Fans were hoping Karate Girl would be the one to get it right, but it ended up being a huge step backward, as too were her subsequent films, but let's stay focused.

What is wrong with KG? Problem #1: not enough Rina! We want to see Rina taking up as much of her film as Jackie Chan takes up of his films. This was a noticeable problem in High Kick and even worse in KG.

Problem #2 is what KG fills the holes with: a lot of plot. Plot isn't inherently bad, but it is when it's so repetitive and boring. I don't know how many times I can listen to the bad guys have the same conversation. I don't know why they want me to try.

Problem #3 is her co-star, the fourteen-year-old Tatsuya Naka. For a fourteen-year-old, she's extremely talented. She has some remarkable acrobatic moves. But the issue is she reads as having impressive agility, not impressive force, and the movie asks us to believe in her force. We watch her incapacitate a room full of large, muscular adults by lightly kicking each of them once, and it just doesn't work. She should be in the movie, just not in this way, and not for this much screen time. The film treats her with the same importance as the person used to market the film, both on the cover and in the title!

A lot of martial arts films are enjoyable with fast forwarding (for example, High Kick Girl). KG is disappointing even then. It has a couple of good moments, and Rina does the best one could hope for with this material, but the final product simply isn't a good one, unfortunately.

If I had reviewed this when I first saw it in 2011, I'd end with "I can't wait for her third film-maybe they'll get it right next time!" But since I'm writing this after my 2018 rewatch, we already know how that one turned out.

To start things off in "Karate Girl" (2011), there's a murder and a kidnapping. Tatsuya Kurenai (Tatsuya Naka) is a descendant of the legendary Sojiro Kurenai, an Okinawan Karate master of almost mythical stature/status who was also the founder of the Kurenai-style of Karate - which is so deadly it can easily kill a person with only a single blow. Tatsuya has trained his two daughters Ayaka and Natsuki in this style. At the beginning of the film, Tatsuya is murdered by henchmen belonging to Shu Tagawa (Keisuke Horibe), a vile gangster who wants Sojiro Kurenai's black belt for himself. He not only succeeds in killing Tatsuya, but he also succeeds in slaying eldest daughter Ayaka and kidnapping younger daughter Natsuki.

We later learn, 10 years down the road, that Ayaka (now played by Rina Takeda, star of the similarly-themed 2009 kick-'em-up "High-Kick Girl!"), now 18, not only survived Tagawa's attempted assassination, but is now a Karate master in her own right and is now the only known living Kurenai descendant around. She has been adopted by another family, and is forced to use her deadly skills to stop a pair of purse snatchers at the movie theater where she works part-time. As expected, the footage of her drubbing the thugs is caught on camera and soon goes viral on the Internet.

The news of this catches Tagawa's attention and he soon sends his Karate-trained thugs to deal with her and finally retrieve the coveted Sojiro Kurenai black belt once and for all. Let the martial arts fighting sequences begin!

One thing that really caught my attention about this movie was the amount of detail paid to the underlying philosophy of Karate as simply more than a form of self-defense. Much attention is focused on how Karate practitioners are trained never to strike first, only to react to a threat accordingly – because, as we are later told in the movie, a well-trained Karate expert could very easily kill a person with a single well-aimed punch or kick. It is also clearly explained how Karate could also be used for protection, whether it be a person or an object or an ideal. This is why I feel that this film's director, Yoshikatsu Kimura, made a better movie than "High-Kick Girl!," which I also enjoyed but was ultimately disappointed by its third act.

I did not feel that way with this movie, directed by Yoshimatsu Kimura. Many will complain about the slow pace, but I find that great care was taken in showing that although Karate is mostly about self-defense (OK, that is its primary purpose, overall), there is a lot more to it than simply fighting. I have not seen this much attention paid to the underlying philosophy of a martial art in the movies since, incredibly enough, the American-made martial arts film "The Karate Kid" (1984). I find that when a martial arts movie gives us something more than just fighting sequences and actually tries to show the audience more about the art itself (italicized), it makes the overall experience a lot more enjoyable.

And in terms of fighting, this movie has many. Rina Takeda is a young and highly skilled martial arts actress. It is clear that she is developing into a real dramatic performer, in addition to a young female a**-kicker. She is also an extraordinarily beautiful young woman. She performs many of her own stunts (which do appear to be based on real-life Karate forms), which is about the most authentic thing about her various choreographed action sequences. They are quite extraordinary and beautiful to watch. The action scenes are actually a lot more brutal, too, than they were in "High-Kick Girl!". The only problem is that it suffers from the same predilection (as in "High-Kick Girl!") for slow-motion replays of the fighting sequences, hurting the pace of the on-screen action. Thankfully, this is done only minimally here.

"Karate Girl," I feel, is a better movie than its predecessor "High-Kick Girl!" and is just as ambitious in showcasing both the dynamic fighting and underlying philosophies of Karate. I honestly hope that Rina Takeda is on her way to America soon!

8/10

The acting is either wooden or scene chewing over the top with almost nothing in between. The plot is paper thin, generic, and illogical even by martial arts movie standards. Overall, the movie feels low budget....but none of that is probably why you're interested in this movie. You probably care about the fighting and I'm happy to report that this movie has plenty of excellent fight sequences.

The movie doesn't have the budget or the creativity for big action set pieces, so they wisely keep the action sequences as simple as possible. That puts the actor's very cool karate fighting styles front and center. The movie does not use quick cuts or shaky camera so you really get to see the details of the fight choreography. Overall, that's the main appeal of the movie. Hand to hand combat. It elevates an otherwise bad movie into watchable territory.

Bonus points for including behind the scenes fight and stunt footage during the ending credits. Not enough action films do that these days.

In my IMDb list of all time greats, I have several martial arts entries. Properly done, they can be fun, even exhilarating. This entry, which loosely follows HIGH KICK GIRL, is literally the lowest possible level of movie export. No real budget. No real story. No real dialog. No real choreography. Rena Takeda does have a legitimate fanbase, and she has skill, but even in her native Japan she tends to get cast in B- and C- films. Even the English dubbing is terrible. ((Designated "IMDb Top Reviewer." Please check out my list "167+ Nearly-Perfect Movies (with the occasional Anime or TV miniseries) you can/should see again and again (1932 to the present))