Amazon.com video review:
Inspired by La Femme Nikita, executed with low-budget slickness, and spiced with soft-core interludes, the Japanese series Zero Woman follows the exploits of a female assassin for a secret government agency. Natsuki Ozawa plays the hard-bitten nymph of an assassin in this 1995 episode, the second in the series. Slinking through the city in a little black dress (where does she hide her gun?), she chases after stolen stock certificates heisted from the mob by a trio of clueless street punks. Finding herself caught between sadistic gangsters, desperate street criminals, and a corrupt, double-crossing government official, she does what any self-respecting stone-cold killer would do: she goes hunting. Shot on high-definition video with a perpetually prowling low-angle camera, this production is a sleekly designed if at times clumsily executed thriller, crammed with slow-motion and skip-frame effects. It's also cruelly violent (watch that meat hook to the crotch!) and archly serious, a bleak, blood-spattered melodrama with an increasingly absurd escalation of nihilistic doom but nary a trace of irony or humor. Director Daisuke Gotoh becomes less flashy but more consistent in the next installment, Zero Woman: The Accused, but Ozawa (who launched the character in 1993) was replaced. It's the beginning of a tradition: after this film, no actress would play Zero Woman more than once. --Sean Axmaker
Amazon.com video review:
Japan's deadliest hit woman is sent to shut down the mob-run black market in human organs and winds up the reluctant bodyguard to the government's chief witness, the sneering mistress of the head man. The Zero Woman formula is closely followed: gratuitous nudity, soft-core sex scenes, and brutal violence abound. In the precredits kickoff, a mad doctor maniacally cackles while fondling the organs of a dissected corpse until Zero puts a stop to the party games, executing the doctor and his gun-toting associates with cold efficiency. She's less enthusiastic about her babysitting assignment, but true to formula her icy heart is melted by her flirty female charge and they engage in steamy female bonding. Such bliss is short lived for the doomed-to-loneliness Zero Woman, however, as a corrupt politician and the kinky, cross-dressing mob boss plot to remove the witness. Long, lean, sphinxlike Chieko Shiratori makes a fine Zero Woman in this installment. She moves more like a model than a warrior, but her cool intensity gives her the façade of impersonal professionalism. This quirky low-budget video series has never been a bastion of high style or meaningful drama--it's downright cheap, often clumsy, and utterly exploitative--but the sleek austerity, nihilistic edge, and world-weary cynicism continues to contribute to the fascinating mythology with each succeeding chapter. --Sean Axmaker
Amazon.com video review:
Rei (Kumiko Takeda) is an icy assassin for a secret government agency known as Zero Department. They target criminals the public cops can't touch and she's their best agent, the Zero Woman. But her targets have hired a hit man of the their own to take her out, a strangely laconic character who decides to turn the assignment into a deadly flirtation. One minute they're engaged in a deadly shootout, the next he's nursing her back to health ("What am I doing?" he asks, incredulous of his own behavior), and his boss decides a little pressure is in order to speed up the process. Assassin Lovers is part of a long-running series of Zero Woman's violent adventures and like an increasing number of Japanese genre films is shot on high-definition video, but it never looks less than professional. Though the story is conventional and frankly exploitative with arbitrary nude scenes, sexual encounters, and kinky S&M digressions, it delivers coolly accomplished action scenes with a hint of world-weary disquiet in a clean, pared-down style that makes the most of a limited budget. --Sean Axmaker
Amazon.com video review:
After murdering a crooked lawyer to the strains of a bubblegum-pop song, stone-cold government assassin Zero Woman (played by Mai Taichira) adopts a "stray dog" of a street hustler, a combination boyfriend and pet who hides a deadly secret. Taichira is more expressive than other Zero Women, at times even cheerful, but is still ready to lose her clothes for numerous showers and sex scenes. More muddled than previous Zero Woman films, this one abruptly changes direction from the investigation of a double agent in the government to a cross-dressing serial killer. Yet this sleek, low-budget video production has its charms beyond the expected boobs and bullets: the empty, artfully austere apartments Zero Woman inhabits (an echo of the film's inspiration, La Femme Nikita), the impulsive loyalty she invests in fleeting friends, and an emotional ferocity that takes over the unusually affecting climax. More than in any other film, Zero Woman here becomes a tragic figure, trapped in a prison known as Zero Division, doomed to the life of a killer, under the thumb of a bored boss who informs her "You aren't the first and you won't be the last." He was right: this was Taichira's only appearance as Zero Woman. --Sean Axmaker
Amazon.com video review:
Zero Department fights for the fealty of its solitary assassin, Zero Woman, when a fumbling waiter melts her icy heart and tries to rescue the world-weary killer from her soul-crushing life. But is her callous, conniving boss right when he insists "There is no place for you but in the Zero Force"? Mikiyo Ohno milks Zero Woman's solitude for tortured loneliness and turns her violent destiny into something approaching pulp tragedy: "I have yet another memory that can't be erased," she laments after yet another fatal showdown. The high-concept hits (she miraculously pulls a gun from her clinging bathing suit to ace a businessman in a swimming pool) and sexual interludes (the nerdy boyfriend scores big-time booty!) are shuffled through a barrage of flashbacks and a subplot about a scarred masseuse whose secret weapon is poison body oil. Sort of takes the fun out of foreplay, doesn't it? Like most of the films in the series, the shot-on-video production manages to turn a low budget into an austere style, but the busy script often gets in the way of the visceral thrills and bogs the story down in unnecessary detail. She shoots people and she likes to get naked: what's there to explain? --Sean Axmaker
