With Eyes East

Directed by Yugo Sakamoto
Starring Akari Takaishi, Saori Izawa, Atom Mizuishi

“I can tell. You are not ordinary.”

I’m so excited that Baby Assassins ballooned into a media franchise, encompassing a trilogy of films, a TV series, a making-of documentary, and a making-of mockumentary, most of which came together in the last two years. Mahiro actress Saori Izawa has been working for a long time, as her action reels on YouTube plainly demonstrate – up to and including slicing a delivery pizza in half with a katana – mostly behind the scenes, even doubling Rina Sawayama in John Wick: Chapter 4. Our dear new franchise, then, is basically her proverbial (if not literal) John Wick moment, and honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised to see her featured more prominently in another American movie soon. It’s weird that American action cinema is currently in a renaissance, but for Japan, movies like Baby Assassins are the exception – kind of.

Baby Assassins: 2 Babies is a more confident production than the original, with a slightly larger lens on a slightly more specific world. It still bears the hallmarks of a relatively low-budget film, climaxing within yet another nondescript warehouse and experimenting with tone and genre instead of upping the spectacle. Maybe as a byproduct, its primary concern remains the slice of life elements, the “what do hit men get up to after the job” Tarantino stuff we talked about last time. I’ve expended countless words on this blog alone (and other blogs) complaining about exactly this, as part of a reflex against anything that threatens the sanctity of the action heroine. Why are female-led action movies so often comedies? Is there something there we don’t fundamentally believe, and have to kind of laugh?

It might just be a matter of execution. I love the early films of Michelle Yeoh, but in lighthearted fare like Yes Madam and especially Wing Chun, she’s playing such good-natured characters who rarely get the opportunity to brood or gloat or be scary – traits often associated with violent people. By contrast, Mahiro and Chisato push the envelope as wonton murderers, to the point where I do think they’d benefit from a sadistic streak. For live-action anime characters, they’re surprisingly not gleeful about their mayhem. And so, Baby Assassins is already asking its audience to accept more than most action movies have – or been historically interested in. That, to me, is valuable beyond set pieces. Watching these characters do anything – and that’s the idea, is they do a lot of “anything” – while knowing they can flip out and kill everyone is its own kind of unique joy. It’s actually classic kung fu, when the stranger waits for wine at the tavern and an unruly crowd gathers around the table. They don’t know what they’re messing with.

In this case, it’s a couple of girls with ice cream all over their faces (they are the messiest eaters). When we reunite with Chisato and Mahiro after a lengthy prologue, they’re eating sundaes and struggling to parse a massive bill for an unaccounted for (and unused) gym membership with the assassin guild. In the span of seconds, they bounce between caring and not caring, between reveries and immediate focus. They’re generally one mind about such things – one brain cell, in the modern parlance. Directed by their handler Susano to pay their outstanding bills by 3:00 p.m. on Friday, in person at the bank, they ask each other on the fateful day if it’s been taken care of. This is like a deniability mechanism built into the script, keeping things unpredictable. But if they’re so equally bad at adulting, how am I supposed to buy the later conflict when Chisato tries to gamble her way out of the predicament and Mahiro keeps giving her shit for it? Why would Mahiro care that much?

She explains that it’s more about Chisato having promised not to gamble again, after losing a game of shogi despite appearing confident, and did. And hey, that is an improvement on the “character arc” of the original. Rather, I think the thesis problem with Baby Assassins so far – and it’s a very mild one – is that writer/director Yugo Sakamoto has a lot of ideas but less interest in connecting them. (I just learned that he’s three years younger than me. Talk about babies). Why do they have to pay this years-overdue bill by a certain time of day? Is 3:00 even close of business? Well, because bank robbers are gonna barge in before they can finish the transaction, giving us an action set piece. Why do they have to get part-time jobs during their suspension after showing off their skills in public (and terrifying the poor bank teller, which was murdering me)? Wouldn’t that create more opportunities for exposure? Well, because the job they pick up is mascots at a fair, giving us an action set piece.

And, to be fair, there’s a theme opening up this time around: the one thing that can stop a bullet! The villains of the film, male assassins Yuri and Makoto, would be the heroes in any other movie, as underdogs trying to break into the guild in which Chisato and Mahiro already perch. In a very Paddy’s Pub maneuver, they hatch a scheme to kill our leads and take their spot. Would that even work? Well, they heard a rumor it would. After getting ripped off on their last gig, it’s the only shot they have, and thus we witness Baby Assassins emerge as an exercise in capitalist critique. These assassins are not the pampered globetrotters of their Hollywood counterparts in John Wick, nor the fully liberated pirates of their spiritual antecedents in Black Lagoon, but hustlers in the gig economy. And they can’t do a damn thing without first referring to the employee manual.

To be fair, also, the two action set pieces cited above are brilliant – and brilliant action comedy. I like the meat-and-potatoes Sonomura fight scenes, though this sequel’s climactic set piece is closer to the Resident Evil: Vendetta bullet-strafing – and the Yuri/Makoto prologue is possibly the most egregious instance of guns as close-combat weapons ever – but more valuable to me are moments like when Chisato kicks a bank robber onto a swivel chair and he spins to face Mahiro, who’s positioned to punch him and keep him spinning back to Chisato, and they just play punchy tetherball for a little bit. And of course, the mascot brawl feels straight out of Saints Row III.

In the last formalistic surprise, Baby Assassins: 2 Babies also carves a real plot out of the ongoing adventures, though it still feels appropriately spontaneous. It’s just stuff that’s happening rather than the product of moves being made by larger forces. We’re not cutting between multiple perspectives and subplots, and there’s no build-up. Yuri and Makoto try and fail to get the jump on Mahiro and Chisato, leading to a series of fumbles that nearly takes the life of the cleaner, Tasaka. As he sits there, dying, the girls vow to hunt the two would-be assassins down. For being so simple, it’s pretty effective, and proof that the Baby Assassins [baby] formula was already strong, but benefits from a few tweaks.