Review by Adam Stephen Kelly
Stars Miki Mizuno, Tetsuya Nakamura, Hiroshi Ohguchi, Rei Fujita, Mitsuki Koga | Written by Takanori Tsujimoto
UK Certification 18 | UK RRP £15.99 | DVD Region 2 | Runtime 181 minutes | Directed by Takanori Tsujimoto
And so Takanori Tsujimoto joins the ranks of other Japanese film-makers who enjoy making outrageous, ultra-violent and ultra-unrealistic gore movies that involve plenty of samurai swords. Following in the footsteps of a variety of blood-lustful writer-directors from around the world, namely Quentin Tarantino, Tsujimoto has created two films that are pretty much Kill Bill rip-offs.
This Double Feature Edition DVD contains both Hard Revenge Milly and its sequel, Hard Revenge Milly: Bloody Battle. You certainly wouldn't want to buy the first film on its own as its running time is a measly 45 minutes, putting it merely seconds into the legitimacy to be called a feature film. It's basically a platform to show a number of brutal killings, nothing much else. You can certainly tell that it wasn't shot on much of a budget.
So, the story. Well, there isn't much of one. Miki Mizuno plays Milly, a young woman hellbent on revenge after the grisly murder of her husband and baby. A massacre that in fact she barely survived, having just pulled through after being saved by an extremist doctor, who mechanised half of her body. The film is set in a dystopian future and lets the audience decide on when the events take place, but most of Japan's cities have been laid to ruin. The half-android Milly tracks down her killers and seeks to avenge her family's slaughter with an array of fancy robotic weaponry, such as a shotgun that's been built into her knee, and a retractable katana attached to her forearm.
The gore effects in Hard Revenge Milly are decent enough if you appreciate the aesthetic that the film has gone for—if you're looking for realistic dismemberments and anatomical correctness or what have you, you're not going to like the movie. Instead of Saw and Hostel-esque bloodletting, the red stuff geysers out of bodies like fountains, with fitting hosepipe sound effects. Aside from all the nastiness the film boasts, it falls into a hole when it comes to the computer-generated effects. They range from buildings to sliced up faces, but they all look pretty horrible and cheap. If you have no money and you want an elaborate death, be practical and cut it well, please don't linger on close ups of graphics that resemble a video game from 1995.
Bloody Battle is a vast improvement over the original film. For a start it's more story driven, with Milly taking on an apprentice so-to-speak—a young woman who wants revenge after her lover was killed and seeks Milly's help. I have no idea how she was supposed to have found Milly or even discovered that she was the “mechanical avenger”, but with a running time of only 70 minutes, yet again under the average length of a movie, that is something that could certainly have been explored in greater detail, as could other parts of the story.
It it also clear that the sequel had a greater budget—it's definitely a more refined film in terms of style and spectacle. Where the first picture had some terrible fight choreography, Bloody Battle's kapow scenes are pretty well done, and the gross factor has been stepped up, with Yoshihiro Nishimura as the gore effects artist. He is basically the Japanese equivalent of Tom Savini, and directed the similarly nonsensical shock vehicle Tokyo Gore Police.
The second film has a twist that you can see coming right from when it's first hinted at near the start, so the payoff really has no effect other than to prove that you were right in your theory. Also, the conclusion of the film is such an unbelievable copy of Kill Bill's kitchen scene, where Uma Thurman's character lets Vivica Fox's daughter know that she'll be ready and waiting for a revenge battle when she's older. That was a real palm-to-the-face scene in Bloody Battle. So, if you want a fix of absurd revenge and crazy Japanese violence, there's so much Harder than Milly.
EXTRAS ★★ Two making of features for each film, the trailer for Hard Revenge Milly, two trailers and four TV spots for Bloody Battle, and a selection of promos for other extreme Asian movies.