Kite Liberator (2007) (V)

Director:

Yasuomi Umetsu

Writer:

Yasuomi Umetsu (screenplay)

Release Date:

21 March 2008 (Japan)

Genre:

Action

Cast

Marina Inoue	...	Monaka Noguchi
Akemi Okamura	...	Manatsu Mukai
Masakazu Morita	...	Rin Gaga

Runtime:

USA:58 min

Country:

Japan | USA

Language:

English | Japanese

Color:

Color

Certification:

USA:TV-MA | Canada:18A (Alberta)

Company:

Media Blasters

Movie Connections:

Follows Kite (1998) (V)

Smooth and hot, but flawed

An average school girl has a part time job as a waitress and maintains an average life in an inner city home. However, what her friends and co-workers don't know is that she's also a cold blooded assassin. Nights she spends killing apparently evil men throughout the city. Her father works on a space station and longs to see her, also unaware of her moonlighting hobby.

Kite Liberator is sort of a sequel to Yasuomi Umetsu's film Kite. The mood is decidedly less depressing and the theme material is handled much less gratuitously. Kite, was more or less a hentai with some nice action fight scenes thrown in. Kite Liberator is more of an action film, with some comedy throughout.

The animation is quite smooth, the shootouts and chases are fast and the explosions are big. All this is good but the action never seems to reach the peak of it's potential. All the characters battling feel graceful and capable of prolonged conflict but none of the action scenes go on very long and even the climax at the end felt snubbed.

Any number of ideas are presented and not a single one is carried to term. Character arcs are started and begin to be flushed out, when the movie is suddenly and confusingly halted. This annoyed me mostly because i actually was liking the characters i saw. Just as i was getting interested in them the credits began to roll. In general, Kite Liberator ends feeling very premature and half baked.

See it of you like assassin's and some smooth action but don't have the time or desire to invest in layered characters or story.

7/10