go ohara | APAROO

‘An Assassin‘ (Asashin) is director Go Ohara‘s latest action film that can also be tagged as a Japanese film noir. With an underworld backdrop and a typical assassin plot (mistake, girl, destiny, survive) there is not much to be offered by the story. — Especially with what seems to be either an underdeveloped script or an attempt to show silence and brute force. The silence is mostly from weak dialogue with long pauses and long close-ups with extended facial expressions. This causes any emitted emotion from the scenes to simply wither away and make you wait, what seems like forever, til the next cut scene.

“Human drama that arises between a ‘Pitiless assassin’ and ‘One high school girl’. A fierce friendship with the one who risked his life.” (IMDb)

Japanese trailer (Twitch)

But with all that, there are still some redeeming qualities to the film. For example, I only realised when “France” was mentioned the second time why the score was French strings. There are other symbolic gestures throughout the film which give it a raw-noir feel instead of simply a low budget and small production feel. More so, the low budget and small production is a notable element of the film adding to the raw-noir feel (as I call it) because it was filmed entirely at night in Sendai Miyagia, a famous shrine grove. Even the overzealous gun play and frequent cigarette smoking grows on the viewer as the film progresses. I know we all want guns that don’t have to be reloaded..