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Schoolgirl Ami's (Minase Yashiro) kid brother Yu (Ryosuke Kawamura) has
been killed by a gang of bullies led by teenage Yakuza-heir Sho Kamura
(Nobuhiro Nishihara) - and now she wants revenge. But her trail for
revenge only leads to her being brutally tortured by Sho's mum (Honoka)
and dad (Kentaro Shimazu) and her left arm being stir fried and cut off. Somehow
though, Ami escapes the Kamuras' torture dungeon and makes it to the home
of Miki (Asami) and Suguru (Yuya Ishikawa), whose son has also been killed
by Sho and gang, and who agree to help her get revenge, Suguru by building
her a machinegun to attach where her arm was, and Miki by fighting along
her side. First, Ami and Miki have to fight their way through a gang of
teenage ninjas who even manage to kill Suguru, then they have to face the
fact that the Kamura clan has gone into hiding (where the parents of the
killed ninja kids are trained to get their revenge on Ami and Miki). Finally
though, after torturing a Kamura-henchman by driving nails through his
head until hegives away the hideout, it's an all-out battle against the
Kimuras, a battle during which Miki loses her leg but substitutes it with
a chainsaw to soon die a hero's death, during which Mrs Kamura reveals her
drill bra and destroys Ami's breasts, during which pretty much all Kamura
henchmen plus Mr Kamura die extremely bloody deaths, and during which Sho
hides himself behind three innocent highschool kids he knows Ami can't
kill, as it would be like killing her brother all over again. Ultiamtely
though, Ami, who has run out of ammo, has substituted her machine gun with
Miki's chainsaw and catches both Sho and his mother at the same time to
saw their heads in two ... ouch. If you think Machine Girl
uses excessive violence to tell its story ... you are of course
abolutely right, but at the same time, you're only seeing half the
picture, since Machine Girl shows its excessive violence in such
grotesque, over-the-top ways, it never actually seems brutal as such but
rather exhilarating (though I have to state at this point, all the
gore-scenes are explicit as can be). So this of course poses two
questions: a) Is it ok to be entertained by excessive on-screen violence,
and b) does this film promote violence? Answer a): In the case of Machine
Girl, yes it is ok to find this kind of outlandish brutality
entertaining, since it has almost no connection to real life violence. Answer
b): Hell no, this is not a film that carries any pro-violence,
pro-vigilante message, it merely shows violent scenes that are so
out-of-this world that no one in his right mind would try this at home
right after watching the film. I mean, people are not stupid ... right? So
this leaves one question open: Was Machine Girl a good film? Hell,
yeah, in its own, grotesque way, and taken as a laugh-inducing gorefest
rather than a message movie, the film was quite simply brilliant, showing
an amazing number of wholly inventive (if totally unrealistic) ways to
torture and kill people, all done comicbook style and with the maximum
amount of gore splattering. Now true, there have been more intelligent
movies, and on a story level, Machine Girl is less than original
(and possibly intentionally so), but quite probably, it's the ultimate
party movie and also quite probably the ultimate gore comedy around. Recommended.
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