Thursday, July 10, 2014


Movie Review

Returner (2002)

October 17, 2003

FILM IN REVIEW; 'Returner'

Published: October 17, 2003

Directed by Takashi Yamazaki
In Japanese, with English subtitles
R, 118 minutes

The opening credits of the atmospheric but flat ''Returner'' reveal that it is a Robot production, a far more telling piece of information than the filmmakers may have realized. This scanned and sampled amalgam of several science-fiction worlds makes for a product that is just that: a product. I'm not sure if this is a movie or a friendly corporate merger.

''Returner,'' which opens today in New York, begins in the middle of a pitched battle, where the rag-covered Milly (Anne Suzuki) crouches to stay below the gunfire. ''The future is in your hands'' are the last words she hears before she dives into what must be a time tunnel to begin her mission.

She travels from the distant future -- 2084 -- to the near past: 2002, the Japanese release date of the film. Her trip drops her right in the middle of another gun battle, a gang war between the coldblooded Mizoguchi (Goro Kishitani), who shoots crying children to silence them, and the revenge-minded Miyamoto (Takeshi Kaneshiro).

Miyamoto's innate integrity is obvious, since he has the placid, slightly exaggerated good looks of an anime hero and hair so impeccably styled that each strand must have been treated individually. He is essentially a gunslinging ronin, and Milly needs him to avert the future war. But Miyamoto is not easily convinced, despite Milly's futuristic rags and magical powers. He probably figures if she can't do much to enliven the secondhand Xerox of a script, then the future's not worth much anyway.

The director Takashi Yamazaki, who wrote the screenplay with Kenya Hirata, does a credible job of handling hand-to-hand combat and spinning-in-midair gunplay. But the lavishly produced martial sequences aren't enough to compensate for a dead-on-its-feet story.

''Returner'' is a smorgasbord that seems to have been picked out of a Dumpster. It clumsily combines a fish-out-of-water story with bits lifted from sources including the ''Terminator'' movies, ''Star Wars,'' ''Starman,'' ''Close Encounters,'' a couple of Pink Floyd albums and H. G. Wells.

What seems to elude the director is that clever pilfering is a form of entertainment itself -- a pop-culture art. Many of us thrill to an adroit realization of such thievery, including the creators who inspired Mr. Yamazaki. He does have a rudimentary grasp of filmmaking, though the actors seem to have been chosen for looks rather than abilities -- with the exception of Mr. Kishitani, who eats through his scenes like battery acid. But ''Returner'' seems to reflect what the filmmaker needs to do with the spare parts he hijacked to make this Frankenstein's monster of a movie -- take them back.

''Returner'' is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has strong language and violence that you've seen in so many other movies you may have lost count. ELVIS MITCHELL

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