BABY ASSASSINS. In the weeks before the election, I leveled out my internal and external vibes with a steady flow of horror movies — easy enough to do during Spooky Season anyway. But in the week following our nation’s failed group project, I find myself drawn back to the oblivion of action and uninterested in anything focused on the trials, tribulations or opinions of straight men. It narrows the field.
Female-driven action movies are certainly thicker on the ground than they used to be and Charlize Theron, Michelle Yeoh, Noomi Rapace and Halle Berry, among others, have done much to up the ante in their films, making thoughtful, interesting, intensely exciting movies with stunts and set pieces that demand rewinding and replaying. But like most recent action, those hits of adrenaline and physical feats come with grit and darkness that, under normal (lol, sob) circumstances I’d enjoy, but feel awfully heavy right now. In this moment, for example, I do not need establishing shots and B-roll of the patriarchy (pre- or post-apocalyptic) and its menacing thugs crushing us underfoot.
In 2021, director Yugo Sakamoto made such a movie with Baby Assassins, originally released in Japan as Baby Valkyrie. (That’s right, I’m reviewing a movie made in 2021. America just elected a felon. What?) Why I spent the intervening years not watching this funny, warm, weird spectacle of martial arts, gun fights and goofy girls’ nights in, despite recommendations, is a mystery of self-denial.
In Tokyo, oddballs Chisato (cheerfully murderous imp Akari Takaishi) and Mahiro (a marble-mouthed Saori Izawa with a mop of blonde hair) are done with high school and under pressure to fit into society and get jobs. That’s in addition to their work as silencer-toting assassins. Chisato is able to grin and blend into a server gig to a point (so long as her temper doesn’t blur the lines between her occupations) but Mahiro’s brain-freezing social anxiety makes interviews alone unbearable. Both are far more at ease shooting and dumping some old geezer (who, in their defense, meets up with high school girls). They’ve also just become roommates and are negotiating the usual hassles and conflicts, like paying utilities or stiffing your bestie with, well, a stiff to dispose of. But things get serious when the girls’ cross paths with a deeply dysfunctional yakuza family headed by a gangster with no concept of irony (Yasukaze Motomiya), his disturbed and paranoid son (Satoshi Uekiya) and daughter (Mone Akitani), who makes up in sheer insanity for what she lacks in control of any kind.
Takaishi and Izawa have the kind of authentic chemistry rarely seen onscreen between young women and girls, chatting and joking together, complaining and flopping on a cheap couch between assignments. They are teen girls (killers, sure) with very different personalities who, instead of being consumed with rivalries and the usual artificial plot motivators, like each other, annoy one another and matter to each other. Somehow Izawa’s portrayal of Mahiro’s introversion doesn’t feel at odds with her scrappy fighting style, hair flying in all directions as she scrambles under and around assailants, planting a blade as she goes. She might mutter to herself about not being prepared to fight such a big guy one moment and take him out with a flying head butt in the next. (I think that scene gave me CTE by proxy.) Takaishi brings a childlike sweetness to Chisato, who’s never happier than when she’s huffing a bag of French bread, that pivots quickly to the rolled Rs of a snarling, trigger-happy gangster when the occasion calls for it.
The fight choreography is fantastic, both armed and empty-handed, and executed with speed and mostly unintrusive camerawork. What a relief, too, to see a fight well lit. Still, our heroines are hardly the cat-suited professional hit-women of a Luc Besson movie, all smoky eyeshadow and seduction. In fact, there’s nothing particularly sexual about them, nor are they ridden with angst over their death dealing. They remain, as ever, a pair of awkward dorks, running back to grab a gun they forgot, high-fiving after a fight.
There are already a pair of sequels burning a hole in the streaming queue but I’m going to revel in finally catching up to the first Baby Assassins before diving in. I need a minute to sit with its uncomplicated fun and savor the high five. R. 95M. STREAMING.
Jennifer Fumiko Cahill (she/her) is the arts and features editor at the Journal. Reach her at (707) 442-1400, extension 320, or jennifer@northcoastjournal.com. Follow her on Instagram @JFumikoCahill.
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This article appears in Community Connection.