Director Atsushi Muroga's 'Gun Crazy: Episode 1 - A Woman from Nowhere' is a calculated attempt at cult coolness that admittedly, on paper, sounds rather promising: hot female bounty-hunter Saki ( Ryoko Yonekura), clad in leather and brandishing a pair of over-sized hand cannons, rides into a lawless 'town' in order to settle an old score with evil gang boss Mr. Tojo (Shingo Tsurumi). Styled after the classic spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone, the film features a suitably barren landscape, slow motion gun battles, menacing stares in close-up, and even a Morricone inspired score (complete with whistling).Sadly, Muroga doesn't quite fulfill the potential of his premise thanks to a rather cheap shot-on-video look, the lack of convincing gun-play from his star, and not nearly enough of the insane OTT violence one might reasonably expect from a Japanese film called Gun Crazy. Sure, we get the guns, but there just ain't enough of the 'crazy' on display for my liking (the film's closing minutes offer the most outrageous moment, but it's all a case of 'too little, too late').If it had been up to me, I'd have given Saki a wider variety of weaponry throughout (and a lot less clothing), made her take at least one unnecessary shower, included a lot more in the way of bloody squib shoot-em-up action, and featured a climactic battle in Mr. Tojo's booby trapped lair against an army of robot ninjas, albino kung fu dwarfs, zombie gimps, and a pair of lesbian conjoined-twin assassins! (okay, okay, that might be going a bit too far, but you get the idea...).5.5 out of 10, rounded up to 6 for IMDb.

Yet another remake of "Fistful of Dollars", Sergio Leone's remake of Kurosawa's "Yojimbo" (suggested by the novel 'Red Harvest').This one is strictly a B-Movie; taken as that, it is rather enjoyable. the direction is crisp, the acting full of verve, the limitations of its 'direct-to-video' photography well-handled.The weakness of the film is in the disastrous decision to marry the 'fistful'/'yojimbo' plot to a sub-plot from Leone's 'Once Upon a Time in the West'. Although leone directed both 'Fistful' and 'West', his motivations behind the two films couldn't be anymore different. The 'Man With No Name' (Eastwood) is a borderline socio-path with a soft spot for broken families. Harmonica (Chaeles Bronson) is obsessed with his own broken family, and obsessed with revenge. These two characters would not have had much to do with each other. In order to bring them together, 'Gun Crazy' has to twist it's plot and complicate it until we lose track of which story we're actually following.But this is a B-Movie after all, and filled with action and silliness; it's entertaining on that level, just don't expect anything more.

The advertising blurb for the movie said it was "a Japanese take on a classic spaghetti Western", and sure enough, it is. Although that genre actually has its roots in various samurai films, most notably Yojimbo, this movie definitely seems to draw more from Segion Leone's westerns.The plot is largely "Once Upon a Time in the West", except instead of Charles Bronson, the person wanting revenge is a young lady, Saki, played by the very attractive Ryoko Yonekura. Then it sort of switches to "A Fistful of Dollars" for a while, has a brief "A Good, the Bad and the Ugly" interlude, then goes back to "Once Upon a Time...". The ending is pretty original It's enjoyable, but the production values are pretty low. While it tries to emulate the style of HK gun-play, it comes off more as a community theater level of special effects/stunts/gun-play.With better action choreography, better gun effects, and the movie just filled out more (it's only about 65 minutes), it would have been a much better movie.

The story of "A Woman From Nowhere" is rather simple and pretty much adapted right out of a Eastwood Spaghetti Western: A mysterious stranger comes into a lawless town run by a kingpin and starts shooting up the place. Even the opening credits and music have that spaghetti feel: Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone would be proud. The really interesting twists are that the stranger is a beautiful (!) woman, Saki (Ryoko Yonekura) on a Harley, and the location is in a town somewhere in Japan.In this actioner, there's a considerable amount of gunplay, some of it good, some predictable, and other spots somewhat hokey, but it's a whole lot of fun. Ryoko handles her guns with believability and aplomb and gives the thugs their due. It wasn't much of an acting challenge for her as it was a physical challenge, but she handled things very well. She shows her acting skills much more as Otsu in the NHK drama, "Musashi."I'd highly recommend film if you're a Ryoko Yonekura fan (which I adoringly am) and/or a "girls with guns" movie fan and it does hold up to repeated viewings. To me, there's something eminently and inexplicably appealing about "girls with guns" movies like "La Femme Nikita" and "The Long Kiss Goodnight." And to have a gorgeous gal like Ryoko starring in it as well is just gobs of icing on the cake.