Well Go USA Releases Baby Assassins on Digital, Blu-Ray and DVD
Well Go USA releases another Hi-yah! original that made the rounds at Fantasia Festival 2022, now on physical media.
Screening at Fantastic Fest in 2021 and then later during Fantasia’s 2022 run (among numerous other festivals), Baby Assassins is one of Yugo Sakamoto’s newer films following eccentric hitmen and Yakuza officers.
The story follows two girls entering their 20s, Chisato and Mahilo, who work for an unnamed hit agency that employ adolescent killers that work with them to blend their contractors into modern society. Their stipulation is that anyone age 20 or older in their employee roster must work a part-time job and find a place to stay, their assassination work covering the other half of the bill for living expenses and inevitable crime-scene cleanup. The difficult part about Chisato and Mahilo is that they don’t like each other, and they’ve been assigned to be roommates in a small apartment while they begin their job search. During their mandatory assignments of job interviews and the odd assassination here and there, they end up pissing off a local Yakuza outfit, lead by a father, his son, and daughter extremely by chance.
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| Box art images courtesy of Well Go USA. |
Video:
Baby Assassins is presented in its original anamorphic 2.35:1 aspect ratio from the film’s digital source. As such the picture is clear, providing some heavily saturated colors in its more well-lit shots and yellowish-green tints in the film’s darker scenes with no absolute blacks to speak of. This might be the intention of the color grading as is mostly the case with action films and their stylized nature. It certainly gives something to linger on, if not atmospherically for a little while during the fast-paced bits, but as the more static and brightly lit shots encourage the eye to wander some details are underwhelming. The film’s bright lighting should lend a stark clarity to the visuals but beyond the camera’s circle of confusion some things remain a bit fuzzy in clarity, mostly in the background. The mise en scène doesn’t provide any insight other than what we already know about Chisato and Mahilo about their nature as slacker types. The optics of Baby Assassins see designed to put you into the visual world of the girls and their insufferable waiting periods in between fast-paced life threatening situations, and it succeeds in this aspect. Between the relatively long unmoving shots of them bored, killing time and all-of-a-sudden fast-paced fight & action sequences, the camerawork and final look of the film does accomplish a smooth transition between absolutes, avoiding a whiplash some action movie might inflict. It also has great fight choreography to thank for this. Kensuke Sonomura provides an excellent & intelligible sense of space and geography of characters that’s never in question during fights, but unfortunately there aren’t very many to speak of. If only we got more.
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| Saori Izawa as Mahiro checking to see if her target is actually dead. Still courtesy of Well Go USA. |
Audio:
Baby Assassins comes with two available audio tracks: a DTS HDMA (High Def Master Audio) 5.1 mix and stereo in the original Japanese with an option for English subtitles. The dialogue is mixed with striking clarity, with certain dialogue uttered sotto voce coming in clear as a bell just as much as the clicks of an empty gun or the swishes of punches and kicks made in the film’s final fight sequences. The more chaotic contrasting action sequences level out beautifully against the rest of the film, adding to the near-gyroscopic nature of acclimating its audience to the level of intensity just around the corner. For the purposes of this review the 2.0 stereo mix was the chosen audio track due to hardware limitations.
Special Features:
There are no special features of note other than a series of trailers at the start of the disc for other Well Go USA/Hi-yah! titles. There is also a trailer for the film itself on the disc, accessible from the menu.
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| Image courtesy of Well Go USA. |
Final Thoughts:
Baby Assassins attempts to mix up some very different elements and it does so to a varied degree of success, depending on who you ask. The influence of slacker culture is inarguably strong here, and should have been its strongest foot in the internal conflict Chisato and Mahilo face, less so their sitcom setup of having to find part-time jobs or suffer each other as roommates which may have run its course in North American comedic circles but perhaps not in other areas. The world and specific situations leading up to the rules the assassins have to follow don’t feel properly thought out, although the dynamic between the two girls and the Yakuza family work in some strange way despite them even having that much of a moment to truly butt heads.
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| Image courtesy of Well Go USA. |
This could very well be the start of a series that intends to flesh out more of this world that employs young assassins, and could clarify many things that this failed to do but on its own Baby Assassins misses out on highlighting things it could have focused on while still insinuating a larger and more overwhelming bureaucratic world that feels less and less prone to allowing the base primal urges to end a life in order to avoid conflict, or in the midst of an argument about chores. It’s a film with the slacker movement on its mind, perhaps too dedicated in its approach as it has employed the services of fight choreographer Kensuke Sonomura but only has one short fight scene to speak of at the very tail end of the film. It’s a great fight but saying that the film is worth watching just for that feels like a stretch.
The performances are completely believable, at times endearing and infinitely relatable, but it’s the core of the film where the characters are written into the world that just don’t work well because the film commits to wandering as its slacker main characters do, unaware of where they’re supposed to be going.
Disclaimer: Well Go USA has supplied a copy of this disc free of charge for review purposes. All opinions in this review are the honest reactions of the author.
From August 16th Baby Assassins is now available to stream on Hi-yah! and for purchase on both Blu-Ray and DVD disc.
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