TheMachineGirl

The Machine Girl (2008)

When Ami, a Japanese school girl (you can tell because of the uniform), loses her younger brother to the obnoxious son of a Yakuza Ninja clan she sets off for some revenge. But along the way they catch her and chop off her arm with a sword. But she makes her escape with the help of the ghost of her brother, who leads her to the family of the other boy that was killed with him. The boy’s parents, former badass bikers now mechanics, teach her to fight and make a machine gun to fit on the stump of her arm. Together they go off to fight the Yakuza Ninjas and get revenge for their dead loved ones.

This is a very simple straightforward plot that exists only to link the endless action scenes together. In other words this is a fan boy’s wet dream of cute Japanese women, one of which is even in a school uniform, running around with guns and chainsaws. The blood squirts, the villains die, and bad dialogue is uttered. So basically this is a live action anime. If this sounds like something you would like then you will love The Machine Girl. It promises and delivers 90 or so minutes of blood soaked goofiness. But I actually sort of like some plot with my mayhem, so I found this movie a bit boring and repetitive after 45 minutes of the same stuff over and over again. Plus there are plot holes that I suppose shouldn’t bother me, but did. Right at the beginning you have an opening to the movie that has to take place after the events in the rest of the film, but because of something that happens during the movie can’t. The cast really doesn’t do much. The women look pretty and yell a lot, and the villains leer and over act. Not much else to say about the cast.

The movie is put together pretty well. The action sequences are frenetic, entertaining, and well choreographed. But if you are expecting realistic fights then this movie isn’t’ for you. The throw downs in this movie are absurd and cartoonish. You have a ninja fighting with a steel jaw that rips off the limbs of his enemies, a woman that jams a chainsaw onto the fresh stump of her leg and starts to kick/saw everyone around her. Hell the machine gun only runs out of bullets when the plot needs it to. Otherwise the thing just fires and fires like the six-shooter from an old western serial. The gore is plentiful, but looks fake. I would normally complain about how silly some of the effects look, but then this movie isn’t trying to be realistic at all. So giant sprays of blood that would of emptied the body in a second can go on and on, rubber heads can be tossed around, and people with enormous holes in their chests can look around for a few seconds before dying without me complaining.

Basically guys this is a dumb movie that tosses liberal amounts of violence and gore around in silly ways to get a few laughs. The plot is weak and the characters paper-thin. I’ll admit that I had a great time for part of the movie, but when I realized it wasn’t going to give me anything but the above I started losing interest. If you are in the mood to pop something into the DVD player and not really have to pay close attention then this fits the bill perfectly.

2 ½ out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer