Yesterday the manager of Eastwind Books, my friendly neighborhood supplier of Asian movies, was telling me she had just returned from a trade show and had been given a load of DVD's. But she wasn't happy. Her main complaint was that although the visuals were beautiful and the effects stunning, she couldn't stand the plots. Ryuhei Kitamura's AZUMI is a perfect example.

Here is yet another tale of—you guessed it—assassins. With today's martial arts films, it's all about the assassins. AZUMI, like PRINCESS BLADE (click to see Teri's review here), NAKED WEAPON, SO CLOSE, and God knows how many other Asian films is about teenybopper girly assassins, and it's starting to get old. In AZUMI, once again, we have an orphaned girl who must avenge something. And we have the obligatory makeover scene. Then something happens, and our heroine decides dresses aren't for her after all. And there's usually a whole lot of terribly unconvincing fighting, blah, blah, blah.

It's not that girly assassins are boring, but the premise has got to be more believable and the execution more consistent. PRINCESS BLADE, which I quite liked, is an exception.  It remains moody and dark throughout and the plot, simple as it is, makes sense. But AZUMI is just all over the place. It starts out something like the Little Rascals with swords and then abruptly turns into something very LORD OF THE FLIES. The assassin leader is so utterly without any redeeming qualities, I couldn't understand why the kiddies didn't kill him! Instead, they drop like flies in the name of his cause.  Whatever.

Now I don't know if Aya Ueto got some bad direction or what, but I never believed for a minute that she was an assassin or that she could kill anyone. She and her playmates smile and giggle way too much to be assassins. Puh-leeze! And that's a major problem throughout this entire film. It's just uneven from the start. 

The fight scenes are nothing to get excited about either. For the most part, the film's been sped up in a vain attempt to amp them up. But there's no saving these scenes, which lack any sense of rhythm, dynamics, or storytelling. Without those elements of timing or the choreography that PRINCESS BLADE got from Donnie Yen, the fights in AZUMI lack any sense of drama. To make matters worse, their over-the-top elements get no support from a film that can't decide whether it wants to be camp or taken seriously.