Janu-Fahey Month: Sushi Girl

Okay, so I’m ending this month on an extraordinary note because for one thing, I’m actually been preparing to look into this film for a long while and it’s not just because it stars Jeff Fahey but well, let me throw you some names to see what I mean. Mark Hamill, Michael Biehn, Danny Trejo, James Duval, Shin’ichi Chiba, Tony Todd and Noah Hathaway of The Neverending Story fame. Pretty interesting way to set up this kind of cast and it’s thanks to the guy who has made short films before this one. It’s not the ones I know but I do now know one of them is called Porntourage so eh, what the fuck?

But anyway, Sushi Girl is the first feature-length movie from Kern Saxton that’s released in 2012 and with this amount of cast, it should have been called “Cult-Favorite Expendables” instead. He also has his own company called Saxton Cinema which includes such films that’s coming soon like The Hard Court which he is currently directing and Stanley Kubrick’s Moonshot Odyssey which oh shit, take my money even if that means you bringing back Kubrick from the dead. You know what? This year has gone to a good start and I’m intrigued by Sushi Girl so let’s see how this pans out.

The film revolves around Fish (Noah Hathaway) who served his time after five years in Prison. However, he is gonna face a different kind of music when he got invited to dinner by his boss Duke (Tony Todd) who thinks Fish knows where the diamonds are after the heist that sends Fish to prison. Duke has also invited his friends Crow (Mark Hamill), Max (Andy Mackenzie) and Francis (James Duval) as they eat the sushi off a naked girl while interrogate and torture Fish before he died before giving answers that he never had.

Fish’s death unravels the other guys to turn on each other with Francis being secretly a narc who wants to get out and Crow being angry at Max for his anger attitude. All but Duke died with Duke himself thinking on taking the unnamed sushi girl along but this movie has a twist. The girl (Cortney Palm) is revealed to be a widow and witness to her husband’s death when Duke shot him six years ago after their van crashes on her vehicle. As for the diamonds, it’s being ripped off the bag that Fish took and left it to the girl who builds up her revenge on Duke as he eats a piece of Fugu which paralysed him before she shots him in the head.

This film is kind of okay but have problems I should talk about. First, the good thing about this film is that it has an excellent cast with Tony and Mark giving them all and their performance is more memorable than others here. Tony is being as sinister as he can be and Mark goes hammy with a Paul Williams look. And given that this is a Jeff Fahey film, his performance is small but memorable since he appeared as one of the guys Duke and the boys took the diamonds from and his acting is ballistic with Michael Biehn and Danny Trejo involved before their characters get killed. It may be a small part but I do see it as three actors from Robert Rodriquez films being a team to each other.

The story itself is fine but felt very Tarantinoesque. It is kind of like watching that torture scene from Reservoir Dogs being remade as a full film with few flashbacks and a surprise twist. And oh boy, here comes the bad parts of the film. I mention the movie is Tarantino-like and while I command this movie for being an homage, I also didn’t like it as well and I’ve seen a bunch of films that imitates the filmmaker’s style that went from good to bad and this one is kind of middle.

The other fault is that the homophobic nature towards Andy’s character (and maybe Noah’s as well) since Max keeps throwing the F-word towards Crow whose sexuality is ambiguous but both Max and Crow hate each other from day one plus the characters are designed to be antagonistic and unlikable so maybe that’s the point. Still, it is jarring and in this day and age. So this movie is only worth checking out if you like Tarantino type of films but there are problems which I already talk about so it’s your take on how the movie is over mine.