FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

XoWizIama Excellent adaptation.

Brenda The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

poe426 HIGH KICK GIRL! starts off promisingly enough, as Rina Takeda "hunts black belts." Her "hunting" attracts the attention of a local gang, The Destroyers, who promptly try to recruit her (shades of THE PROFESSIONAL). Throughout the movie, characters are introduced by name usually mere moments before they're killed off. I've seen this kind of thing in kung fu movies and have come to believe it's because the movies in question (like THE WATER MARGIN or THE BRAVE ARCHER, for instance) are based on books. HIGH KICK GIRL! is so linear, however, that it's hard to believe it's based on a book (a manga, maybe). Like Kathy Long's character in KNIGHTS, Takeda wades through the opposition like a freight train- and then abruptly steps aside to allow her sensei (Tatsuya Naka) to take over a little more than halfway through the movie (which he does without missing a beat). The action is tight throughout and there appear to be more than a few instances where some solid contact was made. I had no problem with the slo-mo replays, myself. If you like full contact filmmaking, you'll like HIGH KICK GIRL!

ebiros2 Don't expect complex plot in this one. It's about a high school brown belt karate student who's unusually strong, and goes about beating up black belts in college, and delinquents in other high schools.The movie is one continuous stream of karate action from one scene to another. It's not even worth mentioning what the plot of the story is. The karate action is also pretty fake looking as you can see that the actors are not actually hitting the opponent.A good movie to watch if you have nothing to do on a rainy evening, which is exactly what I did. It's in the genre of mindless entertainment, and as for that it's worth a watch.

Angelus2 Rina Takada plays a girl who is relentlessly pursuing her 'Black Belt' by beating up every top fighter around her neighbourhood. Unfortunately, her challenges draw the attention of an elite group of fighters who have an old score to settle with her Sensei.As the film goes on it becomes quite boring and dull, it is the age old story of a student who goes off the rails, and then her teacher arrives to save the day...However, the film is not focused on drama, it's aim is to create a amazing fight scenes. And it succeeds to an extent.The fight scenes are very realistic and brilliantly devised as 'High Kick Girl' takes out her opponents with spinning kicks and head kicks, but the one thing that ruins a perfectly good fight scene is a 'Replay'...and this film has a lot of 'Replays'....An awful lot. Sometimes it nice to see a close up of a kick...But honestly, you'll hate it after Thirty minutes.All in all, a satisfying Karate movie.

zetes After Prachya Pinkaew's awesome Chocolate, I've been hungering for more female-starring martial arts movies. This one supposedly stars a teenage girl named Rina Takeda. Takeda isn't that bad in the martial arts department. In fact, all the martial artists seem pretty good at karate. But whoever choreographed the fight scenes was extraordinarily unimaginative, and the director is downright awful. The titular girl starts some trouble and gets her friend and herself kidnapped. They are being used as bait by a local karate gang to lure in her karate teacher (Tatsuya Naka). Much of the movie is actually Naka fighting, so the High Kick Girl is regulated to second banana status for at least half the movie (honestly, I guess I'm not too bothered about that since she's not that attractive anyway). The sound effects are even worse than those old-fashioned chop socky movies from the '70s. The film moves at a sluggish pace, with characters standing around staring at each other or their defeated victims for minutes at a time. To make it worse, the film hasn't even a hint of a sense of humor after the opening sequence (the only part of the film that's even remotely watchable). Each challenger from the evil gang is named for us via subtitles, yet only one of them can take more than two kicks before falling down, presumably dead since the final sequence takes place in a high school gym (did I mention the horribly unimaginative shooting locations?) and Naka beats up like 50 people (way less fun than that sounds). The first guy had to have been lying their for 20 minutes, and still he shows no signs of life. And, saving the worst offense for last, whenever there's a karate move that's even remotely cool, which, in the director's mind, is approximately 90% of every move the characters do, we get to watch it again. Sometimes it's in slow motion, sometimes not, sometimes from a different angle, sometimes not. Once in a while, the shot will literally play at normal speed twice in a row. I estimate that the editor padded this POS out another 30 minutes, bringing its grand total up to 81. To add insult to injury, the credits sequence ostensibly is meant to show us bloopers, in the grand tradition of Jackie Chan. But only in one of the shots can you even tell there's a screw-up. Most of the time you're watching the same fairly unimaginative karate moves for the third time!