Toei's V-Cinema (straight to video) line is celebrating it's 25th anniversary. The series begun in 1989 with Crime Hunter and has since produced countless action, yakuza, horror and exploitation films like Lady Battle Cop (1990), The Fighting King (Sho Kosugi, 1993), and Ju-on (Takashi Shimizu, 2000). Toei are now releasing (somewhat ironically) a theatrical film to celebrate the event. 25 Nijyu-Go will naturally star the king of V-Cinema, Show Aikawa. Opens November 1.
No trailer yet, just a special teaser which contains behind the scenes footage
The plot is simple. Everyone is after a bagful of money. Gangsters, detectives, and so on.
Unfortunately nothing much happens for the first 80 minutes. It takes an eternity before action begins, and once it does, it's surprisingly dull and poorly staged.
One of the major problems in is that the film has a constant comedic undertone, and is acted in a "tongue in the cheek" and "don't give a shit" manner. This was supposed to be badass trash for male audiences, but it's more like a bunch of 50 year old V-cinema stars fooling around and looking intentionally unconvincing.
It's such a shame, since Toei gathered just about every major V-Cinema star (minus Riki Takeuchi), and even allowed to filmmakers to go practical with real guns, explosions and (mostly) practical effects.
