Burning Hearts

A young model living in Japan feels depressed and slightly paranoid (thinking people are following her). Going to see her model friend she has to stiff an already lethargic cab driver because she has very little money on her. Arriving to her friend's flat she is confronted by yet more betrayal and hurt from those she thought she could trust. Fortunately her situation seems to be just the thing that cab driver Kazu needs to jolt him back from apathy.

This really is a film of two halves and it is totally clear that the second half is the one that the whole film is about, since it is a pretty impressive fight sequence. To talk about this first, the sequence plays out with a fixed side-on view and the camera moves up and down the street as the fight itself does. Although there is no amazing wire work or effects, the fight is engaging because it flows very well and appears to have been done in one take (although I suspect some of the lampposts etc mask an edit here and there). This technique drew me in really well and impressed me with the choreography and how fluid and natural it all felt (well, as natural as a 1v10 fight can be). The film concludes with a little moment which is meant to give it context, but really the fight sequence is all you care about.

With that in mind, one does have to wonder why we have to have such an unnecessarily long walk to get to the fight. We join the model as she gets into the cab – this is necessary because we need the connection with the driver. After this we need some event to trigger the action, but given that there is really no connection between the fight and all the stuff with her friend and the man, I am not sure why we have to have that. If it had worked then no problem, but it is so clunky and unnatural and uninteresting that it just serves to push people away and I suspect many of the target audience for the second half will have been bored out of it by then. The writing is a problem but to be honest the single biggest problem is Shpak, who is terrible. She is wooden, stiff, unnatural and her English dialogue just adds to this. It is not all her fault though and the script doesn't help by giving her whiney words to say, instantly putting many viewers' backs up I suspect. By contrast Ichiyama is really good, a nice narration to open and a good physical presence throughout the fight – but not to the point where we think he is superman.

McFay's direction of the fight scene is really good although I guess a part of it belongs to the choreographer. The fighters all hit their marks very well throughout the long take(s?) and this part of the film works very well. Why we have 7 minutes of some whiney model being upset and moaning about it, I have no idea. I don't like the idea of skipping to the "good bits" of films, but to be honest if you were to start this film around the 7 minute mark, you really would have missed nothing.