Yo-Yo Girl Cop

Yo-Yo Girl Cop (2006)
Dir: Kenta Fukasaku (Battle Royale 2/ Prod. Battle Royale )

The film opens up with a young girl running through the town square in Tokyo bound with a bomb strapped to her chest trying to clear the crowd as the timer ticks away.Quickly the bomb ignites killing her and wounding several surrounding civilians.

After the event we see a young woman named Saki who is in F.B.I. custody for several crimes and apparently her mother is a career criminal as well whom is in jail for terrorist threats.A Japanese detective by the name of Kira asks to have her deported back to japan for trial as the girl manages to free herself and attack several of the federal guards before bring knocked out.Upon waking up she is in Kira's custody and has been transferred to Japan. Kira gives Saki a opportunity to free her mother and receive a plea bargain on her charges if she agrees to go undercover at the Seisen academy in Japan to investigate the woman exploding in the city and research a popular website among the teenagers called Enola Gay, which is a site dedicated to students who are bullied and seek revenge through terrorist acts, especially Suicide bombings and the like.

She agrees to this and is given 72 hours to solve the case as a mysterious countdown starts on the website.
At the school Saki see's the troubled students and how popular the site has become amongst the youth. On her first day she meets Tae , A loaner girl who is constantly picked on by Reika the leader of the popular kids.After beating up some bullies in order to stand up for Tae , the two quickly become friends and Saki is told that the deceased girl was last seen hanging out with the Chemistry club leaders Amaki and Hagashiyama.
As Saki goes to question them she finds them both with bombs strapped to themselves and they flee , Saki chases Higashiyama threw a mall and after knocking herself out , Higashiyama turns himself in and spills the beans on what made him interested in the site , in making explosives, and who gave him the materials and know how. Turns out it was the School janitor named Jiro.

While watching over the site Saki see's that their is a leader of the group who goes simply by Romeo and they plan a real time show on the site that night.In order not to spoil too much about the film , And since from here the story kind of jumps all over the place. The basic deal is this. Saki continues to investigate the site and tries to find who Romeo is. The real time show turns out to be a trap set by Romeo and his gang who lure some officers to their headquarters and are blown up.On Day two Tae reveals that the countdown on the site ends on the one year anniversary of an attempted suicide bombing by her old friend Kanda whom was bullied and her and tae created a site at one time based on romeo and Juliette named verona for kids to gether together who were bullied. after the failed bombing attempt the site became Enola Gay leading us to believe that kanda is behind the group. A rally is scheduled at the school at the exact time of the countdown conclusion and it is a hoax to get the police's attention away from Romeo's real plan of robbing a bank.

Romeo is in fact the janitor from the school Jiro and saki goes to his headquarters to take him out, but he has a few more tricks up his sleeve. Upon arriving at the base Reika and Saki do battle with yo-yo's and then explosives are set giving Saki only three minutes to save Tae and her friends from certain death and defeat Jiro. This leads to a pretty unique martial arts segment and everything happens as you would expect it to. After the showdown Saki's mother is freed and asks Saki to come back to New York to live with her but Saki decides she will stay in Japan and join the special service permanently.

I really don't know what to think of this film, I mean it is decent but I guess I have grown to expect something much different from a Japanese film nowadays. Perhaps I have been spoiled by the J-Gore genre and have started to think that is what all these strangely titled movies provide. this film has a decent premise and the story is well put together but there is literally no gore in this film and I was expecting at least some blood from a film based on suicide bombings. The movie kind of plays out like a Japanese cartoon aimed at young adults or a futuristic episode of the A-team or something like that. The Martial Arts choreography in this one is well done but this movie is just not my cup of tea. I prefer the old school Kung -Fu flicks like those of the Shaw Brothers over this new wave wire fighting super flip kick style that is so popular these days. I mean I grew up on Kung-Fu Theatre with Master Tat Mao Wong and I just cant really get into this new stuff, Perhaps I am just getting old. Also after finding that this films was made by the same people responsible for battle Royale , which is a classic my expectations were extremely high for this one.I was hoping for Battle Royale meets Machine Girl I guess, And that is not what this one is. With all of the bouncing back and forth between characters and everyone turning into whiny emo's half way through the film I was just a bit disappointed. Although as I said the film on it's own is not bad , just not my type of movie.If you like films like the Transporter and newer action flicks you may enjoy this more than I , So I would recommend it to action film fans as it delivers somewhat in that aspect I suppose. I am not really sure how to rate this one on my normal scale so I guess I will just give it an overall score. Because this is how it would look with my typical rating system.
Gore:1 ( very little blood in this one)
Nudity:N/A
Story:6 (Kids get bullied seek revenge through columbine like terrorist threats)
Characters:5 (Most everyone in the film is downright emo to the point the film comes off as a giant pity party)
Overall: 5 out of 10