A waste of 90 minutes of my life

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

I must admit I really enjoyed watching the movie.I really like the fight sequences done in the film. Without knowing anything but what I see, it feels like a group of people who knew Karate got together and made a cheap karate film. I can't help but to find that cool. If I knew Karate, and knew a butch of other people that knew Karate, I would get my camera and do the same thing.It was the good type of cheesy. Sure, these guys need to learn how to do some fight choreography to make the fights more fluid, and to make the blows more realistic (A good sound guy could have help with that as well), but when it comes to Marshal arts films, I got to give these guys and A for effort. It was pure enjoyment. The story was so weak it does not need to be mentioned and I did not get the need to repeat fight scenes in slow motion, which showed us how accurate the technique is, but show us how fake the contact was, but overall it was cool that things like this get made.

If you want 100% realistic fighting, then "High-Kick Girl!" is the movie for you. This is not a perfect film - what martial arts movie is? - but what gets it by is the fact that all the fights in the film, as I said before, are 100% realistic and used no wire-work or CGI (and if they did, they did a damn good job of concealing it in post-production, but I don't think that's the case here)."High-Kick Girl!" is a 100% total Karate kick-fest. It's been awhile since there have been any significant showcases for this beautiful Japanese art stateside, but this flick delivers the goods. Kei Tsuchiya (newcomer Rina Takeda) is a teenage Karate brown belt who displays some incredible fighting skills, yet her master Matsumura (Tatsuya Naka) won't promote her to the coveted black belt rank because he feels she isn't ready for it.To get her "kicks," Kei has earned a reputation on the streets as the notorious "black belt hunter," challenging the highest-ranking students at Karate dojos all over town and taking their black belts as trophies. Through a friend, Kei manages to get an audition for the Kowashiya ("Destroyer") group, a gang of martial arts-trained thugs who control much of the city's organized crime. Kei passes her test by drubbing a group of schoolgirls but is unaware that she is being used as bait to lure her master into a trap. But Kei learns too late when it turns out that the Destroyers have a grudge against Matsumura and are going to use her to draw him out of hiding."High-Kick Girl!" was co-written and directed by first-timer Fuyuhiko Nishi (from his own novel of the same name), and it's an impressive debut. He chooses to use wide-angle shots to capture all the action to give the impression to the viewer that all the fighting and acrobatic stunts are indeed real, and no CGI, wires, or camera trickery was used to enhance them. Also worth noting about the fights themselves is their authenticity: many times it looks as if Rina Takeda and company are really going at it by using full-contact fighting. When someone gets punched (or kicked) in the head, it looks and sounds like it really hurts. It definitely adds to the realism that the movie seems so desperately hard trying to achieve, especially in a genre where realism often takes a backseat to the fantastic (and damn-near impossible). (Most impressive about this particular aspect of the picture is the fact that there's no blood or outlandish gore whatsoever, despite the high-impact intensity and violence of the Karate fighting sequences. Additionally, there's no sex, nudity, or gratuitous shots up Takeda's skirt. And did I mention how strikingly attractive some of Takeda's female sparring partners are?)All of this is a plus in a genre that for a while there, seemed to be on the CGI bandwagon in the wake of "The Matrix" (1999), its sequels, and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" (2000). One last thing is that the fights take up pretty much the entire movie. There isn't a whole lot of time wasted on character development, phony theatrics or dramatics, or unnecessary plot devices. For martial arts movie fans wanting a not-stop fight-fest, this is the movie for you.The problems arise with the uneven script and the director's choice of including slow-motion replays of all the coolest fighting sequences. This is something that hampered the enjoyment of the otherwise fantastic "Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior" (2003) and Tony Jaa was wise to abandon this trend for his next feature "The Protector" (2005). The reason it's so unnecessary is because it ruins the tone of the fighting sequences and draws them out, trying the patience of the viewer. The most significant low point of the picture, however, is that Kei starts out as such a high-kicking Karate bad-ass - she's arrogant, yes, and undisciplined and has earned her bragging rights, but she's still a bad-ass - but when she is taken hostage by the Destroyers, she suddenly becomes limp, secondary, and a damsel-in-distress to Matsumura's extremely humbled and disciplined one-man army who has come to try and rescue her.I guess that even with these discrepancies, "High-Kick Girl!" still ends on a good note where Kei has learned a valuable lesson about her experiences and Karate's underlying philosophy about how real power rests in the art's katas ("forms") and not the fists (or legs, for that matter), and that patience and discipline are treasured above all else. Rina Takeda has a great future ahead of her, if she ever chooses that route. Despite her strong skills and being a strikingly attractive young woman (yeah, she's definitely a cutie, in the eyes of this poor male) - and perhaps being the first female martial arts star from Japan since Etsuko Shihomi of the "Sister Street Fighter" films in the mid-'70s - "High-Kick Girl!" is equally Tatsuya Naka's picture, since the stoic, disciplined Karate master becomes a major force in the film's second half, a sort of yin to Takeda's yang.Karate is a strikingly (no pun intended) beautiful art, which I think was perhaps the point of this movie and why the director went to such extreme lengths to showcase the fighters' abilities when duking it out on-screen. Of course, if his script had been better and the film's protagonist wasn't relegated to a secondary role in the third act, this film would have been perfect viewing for any martial arts movie fan.7/10

First off the movie "Chocolate" absolutely demolishes this movie in the amount of action and REAL martial arts skills displayed. As soon as I saw the length of the previous review, (overly long and just too-detailed)and the fact that the review disses an obviously superior film like Chocolate. I suspected that the review was planted...Oops I meant biased as is most times the case.High Kick Girl is another in the long line of overall slightly disappointing girl karate movies, all with great promise, all ending in mediocre results.Part of the issue is that JeeJa Yanin star of Chocolate is a real martial artist of amazing skill, and when it comes down to it, lesser skilled "actresses" just cannot cut the mustard when the action starts, even if fast camera edits/cuts attempt to simulate a fast paced frenzy. Sorry but this is no substitute for REAL talent, although I am sure there will be plenty more pretty Japanese school girls to see fighting in the future, (if poorly).As for High Kick Girl itself...do you like slow motion? you better because every scene with some martial arts kick is repeated over and over again, there are also scenes that have little to do with the plot added as well as other scenes where the action just stops. you'd think the DVD has a glitch in it. I think the director realized there just isn't much plot and tried to stretch the film out to a still short 85 minutes. High Kick Girl not terrible, but a poor choice.

The greatest cinematic invention is this: A cute schoolgirl in a short skirt kicking butt. Yep, I'm a sucker for movies like this. All I ask is that there be plentiful exhibitions of well-choreographed buttkicking by cute schoolgirls. "High Kick Girl" provides a lot of this for the opening 50 minutes or so, but then takes a turn for the worse.There are a number of positives to this film. First of all, there is a ton of fighting here. I didn't actually time the length of the action sequences, but it felt like they occupied more than half of the total running time. This is a good thing. Secondly, the martial arts choreography is 100% realistic. Not one move required the use of wires, and most of the actors gave an impressive exhibition. Thirdly, the lead actress has an intimidating, arrogant persona and it's fun watching her taunt and humiliate her opponents. Fourthly, there are a handful of cute schoolgirl baddies that the protagonist battles with. Fifthly, the camera-work uses a lot of wide shots so that the viewer can see everything clearly. There are also some fairly long sequences without cuts or editing gimmicks.Unfortunately, there are a number of negatives to this film as well. The biggest problem is the rampant, undisciplined use of slow motion replays. The viewer is shown a strike at regular speed, followed by a replay of that same strike in slow motion. At first this was useful because some karate strikes are somewhat deceptive and fast, but as the film went on the slow motion just killed the fluidity of the action all together for two reasons. First, slow motion replays were shown for very basic strikes (e.g., a straight kick to the gut), which is worthless. Second, the final confrontation uses sequences that are first shown in slow motion, then replayed in SUPER slow motion. This was a major miscalculation on the part of the filmmakers because the scene just drags and drags into mind-numbing boredom. It felt like they were just padding the running time to break 80 minutes. Not good.Another problem is Rina Takeda's inexplicable turn from intimidating buttkicker to worthless wimp during the middle section. She pummels a whole school of big dudes at the beginning of the film, then goes into a shell and plays victim/hostage for most of the second half. In addition, she was fairly inactive during the finale and only took down one baddie in a not-so-awesome fight. (Tatsuya Naka takes over from there and looks impressive though.) One other thing that bothered me was that this film introduces a really cool, acrobatic schoolgirl villain near the midpoint, only to then completely forget about her for the rest of the movie. This was another terrible decision by the filmmakers that made the final fight even more disappointing because the viewer will automatically expect a throwdown between Takeda and the antagonist schoolgirl. It never happens.I disagree with anyone who claims that "High Kick Girl" is better than either one of JeeJa Yanin's films ("Chocolate" and "Raging Phoenix"). Yes, Takeda was very impressive and is a talent to look out for if she decides to do more movies, but I suspect that martial arts "purity" will be the only true reason for someone to prefer "High Kick Girl." There's more to action movies than "purity" though, and JeeJa Yanin's flicks have finale's that blow "High Kick Girl" out of the water irregardless of whether or not wires are used. In addition, the storyline to "High Kick Girl" is just as limp (if not more so) than JeeJa's movies, so there's no advantage there either. I guess the reader will just have to watch them all and make up their own mind.I would still recommend "High Kick Girl" despite its flaws. There's more than enough fun to make it worthwhile.