Yo Yo Girl Cop (2006/Magnolia)

 

Picture: C     Sound: B-     Extras: C-     Film: C

 

 

What could have been good if they makers cared, Kenta Fukasaku’s Yo Yo Girl Cop (2006) is essentially La Femme Nikita for the teenier bopper crowd, and in the worst possible way.  When a young lady is blown up in the middle of a business square in Tokyo, the police turn to a young troublemaking female criminal to do their dirty work.  Unfortunately, if Shoichi Maruyama’s script had an original idea, it disappeared a long time ago.

 

We see the title character get rejected in school in sequences that give us no idea as to why.  The 99 minutes drag on and on, K (as she is called as we guess “Kita” might have been to obvious) goes into a high school to find the killer(s) since the victim was a young high school girl and the result is much more flash that substance.  If the idea is “ass kickin’ action” or the like, it can’t be that good when it is this stagy.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image has some good color, but depth, detail and consistent image quality you can forget about.  Takashi Komatsu’s cinematography is nothing very memorable, despite some good locations.  The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix (in either English or Japanese) is lively enough, if not perfect.  Dialogue sounds good and Goro Yasukawa’s score is nothing great.  Extras include the original Japanese trailer and a making of featurette.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo