It's the end of the 21st century and humanity is losing a war against invading alien force. A time machine is their only remaining hope, but things take a turn for the worse when the original traveller dies and a young girl is sent instead.As you can see, the film doesn't exactly shine with originality. It's your basic time-travelling fish out of the water storyline, this time with a Japanese setting. But even there it fails because it more closely resembles an urban gangster movie, and not a very good one at that. Sure there's the aliens, but they're not in the movie very much and are your run down the mill basic Roswell aliens.Not to say that the film is godawful. Some of the action scenes have a bit of flash to them and the two main characters are enjoyable, especially Milly (Anne Suzuki), who's delightfully capable and resourceful for an early turn of the century action heroine.Still, the fact remains that Returner has perilously little to show for itself. It's not original, it's not particularly well executed and you really don't get much out of it. There are worse movies out there, certainly, but it's not a movie worth looking for.

The Japanese ape American Movies? Please, go over your history. The Japanese were able to take a Western art form and appropriate it to their own culture in ways we may only stand in awe of their accomplishments. This includes rock-n-roll, the arguably penultimate Western art form. Yes, 'Returner' is very sentimental in places, ala Stephen Spielberg, unfortunately. Still Suzuki and Yoshiro work so well together in this film, it is just a plain pleasure to watch. I will never regret the tears I shed for this work.As a reviewer before me noted, where are the Americans getting a large proportion of their best movies? The Japanese and the Pang Brothers (Hong Kong, I believe, though they work a lot in Thailand). Usually less than brilliant remakes of the originals. Bangkok Dangerous? The Eye? Does anyone dare re-make 'Ab-normal Beauty'?

The first impression I had when watching this movie was "oh great, another SF movie that takes the most known themes from the genre (alien invasion, time travel, etc) and mixes it together" ... but when the movie was over, I felt the mix was successful and there wasn't a boring moment in the movie.The fact that this movie stars three good actors: Kaneshiro Takeshi, Suzuki An and Kishitani Goro is another good point. I especially enjoyed Kishitani's part as the main villain. He's a great actor who can pull off playing a villain as well as a hero.Special effects aren't extraordinary but well done and they blend in well with the scenes.Overall an enjoyable movie that I wouldn't mind re-watching

I must say when I picked this movie out it was with a bit of trepidation on the cheese factor. So I popped this one in for my friends while I cooked dinner, Suddenly I notice my very talkative friends were silent. Worried that someone had spilled something, I came out of the kitchen and They are all sitting contently watching this movie, I sat down and decided to watch a few minutes, Half an hour later the refried beans I had just put on were now rock hard and I was still sitting on the couch holding the spoon. There were still cheesy bits, but as a whole it was much better than expected.We had watched the dubbed version first, and I must say I was not impressed in the least with the dubbed version, however, its only a guess but I believe "milly's" Voice over is also the Voice of "Fuu" from "Samurai Champloo". Later I watched subtitles, and It was so much better. I definitely love this movie. I could see this being a cult classic, If only people can get past subtitles.