Four hardcore gamers are forced to cast aside their differences and work together in order to defeat a giant sand worm monster in a computer simulated virtual reality world. Sounds like a really cool and fun premise, right? Well, it just ain't. Writer/director Mamoru Oshii gets the picture off to a cracking start with the gnarly CGI monsters, striking shots of a bleak desolate landscape, and rip-roaring action scenes. However, the movie runs out of gas early on and becomes bogged down in an increasingly tedious and tiresome brooding existential moodiness that strives for profoundness only to wind up coming across as extremely boring, irritating, and pretentious instead. The meandering and repetitious narrative goes around in circles just like the thinly drawn characters trudging through this ordeal. While Oshii does deliver several stunning visuals (one girl gamer sprouts wings and takes flight in a particularly breathtaking image), the annoying bickering between these unlikable individuals with one-note personalities, the draggy pacing, a frustratingly lame'n'abrupt ending, and the general mind-numbing ennui make this film a serious chore to endure. Worst of all, the fact that everything is simulated negates any genuine tension or urgency because one never gets the impression that anything substantial is at stake at any given time in the story. The basic point seems to be that combat in between fighting is dull. Pity the movie itself proves to be pretty blah and dreary as well.

Mamoru Oshii's latest film is a supposedly linked to his film in the portmanteau film called Kill. It is also a second go round in the world of Avalon, which is the name of one of his other live action films. The earlier film deals with a woman who is paid to play in an online game set in a world called Avalon. The earlier film is a very good looking film but one that people either lover of hate.Assault Girls is a film that I think most people are going to hate. The film begins with a very dense very complicated narrated sequence that sets up everything and explains a new version of Avalon. Its a sequence that is so long and so rambling that I ended up checking how much time elapsed on the DVD, eight minutes and it was still going.Once Oshii gets all of the words out the way the film descends into the excesses of the earlier film which are these beautiful but almost silent sequences that seem to have been designed to look good but don't really work outside of that. Yea things like the giant worm gotcha bit that immediately follows the narration is nice but it takes too long to get to the punchline.Give the film points for looking good and very much like anime come to life, but strip away even more for technical gaffes like having all of the battlefield dialog spoken into masks which makes understanding what is ever is said near impossible. The fact that this Japanese film was made in English with actors who don't speak the language well enough doesn't help either.(yes they speak fine when unmasked, but with the masks its a almost unintelligible.) Worse is the pacing. Outside of the early worm hunts not a whole heck of a lot happens until the end. This is not real life reflected back at us, this is four characters walking across a blank landscape. Yea there is some action at the end but I'm guessing that most people who have the film play out to the end credits only had it do so because they fell asleep on the film and were woken up by the loud music that plays with the credits.Give the film 10 points for the look. Take away about twenty five for the boredom.

The only reason to watch this film is because it has three hot Japanese babe in it.Sadly, they are given very little to do. The plot is I guess is that for some reason, three babes are in this Virtual reality game because the world outside has been largely wiped out, but apparently, the game merely consists of hunting CGI sand-serpents with elaborate weapons. Or something. Let me know if you figure it out...The special effects aren't bad, but the characters are so dull, and there are such long gaps in action, such as long shots of a huge snail before the male lead eats it....Maybe this is a treatment for insomnia in Japan.

The imagery is beautiful, and the special effects and the weaponry/armor were outstanding. But nothing happens! There's little dialog, which is extremely muffled by masks, along with being really poor English.The problem is the director spends 90% of the time with extremely long shots of the shooters walking around or dancing. There are five full minutes spent watching someone fry eggs and eat them. Several minutes alone are spent following a snail around.If they cut out all of the too, too long atmospheric shots this "movie" would have been a 20 minute FX test reel.I have to say, though, the fight between Jager and Gray is pretty funny, but for some weird reason, all too short.