Baby Assassins (2021) Review

“Baby Assassins” Theatrical Poster

Director: Yugo Sakamoto
Cast: Akari Takaishi, Saori Izawa, Mone Akitani, Yukina Fukushima, Masanori Mimoto, Atom Mizuishi, Yasukaze Motomiya, Takashi Nishina, Yosuke Ohmizu
Running Time: 95 min.

By Paul Bramhall 

We can blame the John Wick franchise for the action genres current infatuation with assassins for hire. Following a bombardment of assassin flicks in the 2010’s which came after the release of the original John Wick in 2014, now only a couple of years into the 2020’s and there doesn’t seem to be any slowing down. We’ve already had Maggie Q in Protégé, Mary Elizabeth Winstead in Kate, Karen Gillan in Gunpowder Milkshake, and those are just the ones that immediately spring to mind. Even Japan, a country in which the action genre is usually relegated to the low to no budget arena, has thrown its hat into the ring with the likes of 2019’s The Fable and it’s 2021 sequel, The Killer Who Doesn’t Kill, which features a surprising amount of top shelf action.

In 2021 it was also Japan that offered up Baby Assassins, thankfully not a literal title when it comes to either of the ways it could be interpreted as meaning. The fourth full length feature from director Yugo Sakamoto, Baby Assassins further elaborates on what appears to be a kind of assassin’s universe that Sakamoto has created. His previous feature A Janitor also involves a world of assassins, as do his shorts The Legend of the Strongest Hitman: Kunioka and Heaven’s Rush. Here he takes a pair of actresses who play significant supporting roles in A Janitor in the form of Akari Takaishi (Distant Thunder) and stuntwoman Saori Izawa (Re:Born), and propels them into the titular roles that the title alludes to.

Straight off the bat it’s clear that Baby Assassins shares a significant amount of DNA with 2019’s Hydra. Not only in the fact that Hydra’s director Kensuke Sonomura is onboard here as fight choreographer, and its leading man Masanori Mimoto shows up on bad guy duty, but also in its overall tone and approach. Hydra was more of a small-scale slice of life human drama than an all-out action flick, ironically one that also involved assassins, and Baby Assassins looks to capture the same feel. Takaishi and Izawa play a pair of teenage assassins working for an agency that’s trained them to be effective killers, and even provides them with an apartment in which they live together.

With their 20^th birthdays looming the financial assistance the agency provides will cease, so when we meet them their goal is to find normal part time jobs that can subsidise the assassin work. That’s not as easy as it sounds though as Takaishi is a hyperactive extrovert with zero attention span, and Izawa is a laconic introvert with zero social skills. Basically neither of them is able to function particularly well in everyday society, nor do they have any real appetite to, their default being to spend their days slacking on the sofa and playing on their phones between kills.

There’s really not a lot to Baby Assassins beyond the above description. Whereas Hydra’s deliberate pacing felt like it slowly revealed layers of characterisation and a meaningful plot, here everything is very surface level. To enjoy Baby Assassins will largely be dependent on how much you can swallow the self-conscious quirkiness of everything onscreen. A countless number of scenes are dependent of Takaishi’s abrasive loudness played off against Izawa’s almost inaudible mumbling (I think she studied Steven Seagal’s DTV output for her characters inspiration), and if you find the first few of these scenes irritating, it’ll be best to clock out early.

There’s a self-aware level of intended cool to the script which feels too blatant for it to come across as anything other than exactly that, such as when the pair have a casual conversation about what they’re going to eat later in front of their tied to a chair victim, making everything feel a little forced. That’s not to say Sakamoto doesn’t have any good ideas, with the concept of the agency the pair are contracted to being an entertaining one, and the fact that it isn’t explored in much detail actually works in the scripts favour. In some ways its reminiscent of the concept explored in Korea’s A Company Man from 2012, in which So Ji-sub plays a hitman whose role is portrayed like any other white-collar worker. However as fun as the concept is, the unstructured and loose narrative eventually begins to feel like it needs a reason to exist.  

That reason does eventually present itself in the form of an amusingly progressive yakuza leader, played by Yasukaze Motomiya (Tokyo Dragon Chef), and his yakuza offspring. Keen to make the yakuza a more inclusive place for women to be a part of, the kind of “female-centric business” he decides to explore is that of the uniquely Japanese maid café. His visit to one such café is actually one of Baby Assassins genuinely comedic moments, as the hyper-cheerful and attentive maids gradually begin to test his patience in ways which are destined to not end well. Thankfully Takaishi also happens to be on shift in another of her attempts to hold down a part time job, and when she assassinates both Motomiya and his son, it’s left to the daughter to take revenge.

The daughter is played by newcomer Mone Akitani, who’s entire performance consists of screaming her lines in what could best be described as an assault on the ears. Thankfully this semblance of a plot only appears when we’re already over an hour into the punchy 95-minute runtime, and serves up an opportunity for Kensuke Sonomura and Masanori Mimoto to do what they do best. With Takashi loaded up with a machine gun and a pistol brandishing Izawa, the pair descend on Akitani’s yakuza headquarters to shoot pretty much anything that moves. The sequence itself is perfunctory at best, however its saving grace is that it offers up an extended one on one that pits Izawa and Mimoto against each other.

For anyone who’s seen Mimoto unleash in Hydra they should have a good idea of what to expect here, and Sonomura once more choreographs a stand-out fight scene that’s intricate, fast, and brutal. The fight itself doesn’t quite hit the highs of Hydra’s action beats, with the occasional redundant move being thrown in here and there which I couldn’t help but notice, however it’s still head and shoulders above most modern fight scenes. Izawa more than holds her own, and I couldn’t help but think what it would have been like to see her in a Sonomura choreographed fight against Rina Takeda, back when she was still active in the action genre. It always feels a little too enthusiastic to say “I can’t wait to see what she does next” when it comes to action actresses in Japan, so I’ll simply say that if we don’t see Izawa onscreen again for a while, she can be proud of the fight she clocks in here.

As good as the fight may be, it doesn’t earn enough good will towards Baby Assassins to make everything that’s come before it any more tolerable. While Sakamoto clearly has some creative ideas, his ability to bring them to the screen in a compelling way, at least at this point in his career, feels like it’s lacking. There are certainly hints at a brighter future though. Both Takaishi and Izawa’s characters do have moments which illicit empathy, it’s just that far too much of their time onscreen makes them come across as lazy and directionless, traits that they both seem more than happy to wallow in. While there’s been plenty of good (and even great) movies about the slacker lifestyle, here their constant laying around and laboured efforts to do anything else only serve to make the pace drag.

With its loose narrative, bargain basement CGI blood, high pitched yelling, and low frequency mumbling, Baby Assassins will likely only appeal to those action fans who are willing to wait (or perhaps skip forward) to see Masanori Mimoto unleash under the choreography of Kensuke Somomura. It’s really not an action movie, so at the end of the day, it’s both ironic and a little sad that there’s not much to recommend outside of it.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 4.5/10