October 24th in Chicago. This was another On Demand viewing. It came down to this or another revenge style film, Falcon Rising. Kite was a bad choice. Based on a 1998 anime by Yasuomi Umetsu where a young girl has her parents murdered by a crime syndicate and she exacts her revenge as a teenager.
The film stars India Eisley as Sawa, the lead character who seeks revenge for the death of her parents. Sawa has got some issues to say the least. She's a drug addict and she's a very lethal assassin. Sawa looks like a pale version of Selena Gomez running around in titillating school girl outfits mercilessly killing gangsters (not a bad a premise right?). Samuel L. Jackson is Karl Aker, the cop who looks out for Sawa in her bloody quest for revenge. Then there's Oburi (played by Callan McAuliffe), he has a past with Sawa but she her memory is hazy on account of the drugs (she only remembers the death of her parents) she doesn't know who the hell he despite the fact that he's always willing to help her out.
The film is set in a dystopian future where the global economy has collapsed and organized crime rules with an iron fist. Despite the fact that the global economy has gone in the toilet, Samuel L. Jackson is a detective (a well dressed one at that) in an international police force. To be honest, none of this makes any sense. If crime rules, why do the cops, who are outgunned, care if a vigilante knocks off the bad guys? They can't control the flow of drugs, human trafficking or roving street gangs but a vigilante cutting off heads of organized crime members is a bad thing. Sawa's plan is usually simple, infiltrate a gang by posing as a teenage prostitute, pick up any intelligence on the mob boss who killed her parents (I can't remember his name) and when she has what she needs, she kills everyone in bloody fashion. Aker is covertly helping her out by keeping the cops off her back and with her drug problems. As you might expect, Sawa hacks her way to Mr. Big and exacts her revenge. Aker ends up betraying her and she's got to kill him. A wounded Sawa and Oburi ride off into the sunset.
This seems to be a clear case where producers took a piece of popular anime and made a live action rendition with a more caucasian friendly cast. The street gangs (copied character for character from District 13) are mostly youth based that spend their free time parkouring when their not engaged in criminal activity and everyone knows some form of martial arts. There's not a whole of originality here but I found it interesting that Sawa's origin is eerily similar to that of O-Ren Ishii's origin. The original Kite anime came out in 1998 and Kill Bill came out in 2003, is it possible that Tarantino based the Lucy Liu character on Sawa? I wouldn't be bothered by it since Tarantino "borrows" heavily from obscure films that most of us have never heard of. I just think its interesting. Anyway, I thought this film would be a good way to kill 90 minutes but I was wrong.
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