Love and Murder of Sheep and Wolf 
羊とオオカミの恋と殺人 「Hitsuji to Ookami no Koi to Satsujin」
Release Date: November 29th, 2020
Duration: 103 mins.
Director: Kayoko Asakura
Writer: Izumi Takahashi (Screenplay), Rahson (Manga)
Starring: Yusuke Sugino, Haruka Fukuhara, Noriko Eguchi, Manami Enosawa, Sho Kasamatsu, Naoya Shimizu, Wataru Ichinose,
A failed suicide attempt brings a fateful connection between a loser who believes his life is meaningless and a cute girl who revels in the act of murder. With a killer concept like this, the bland final product is a disappointment.
Etsuro Kurosu (Yusuke Sugino) is our main protag and when we join him, he is living a closeted life in his apartment as a borderline hikkikomori after dropping out of uni. Wracked by despair, he attempts to commit suicide but this becomes the layup for an unlikely meet-cute.
Kurosu’s death by hanging goes awry when the support beam of the shelf that was meant to bear his weight comes loose and fatefully tears a hole in the wall between his place and his neighbour’s. This creates a peephole (complete with heavenly light piercing through!) allowing him to spy on the occupant next door and, lo and behold, it is a beautiful young woman named Rio Miyaichi (Haruka Fukuhara).
Almost immediately Kurosu engages in voyeurism, but he gets more than he bargains for when, one day, he witnesses her killing someone! When Kurosu screams, he alerts Miyaichi to his peeping ways and is caught by her. However, just before she can use her blades to add him to her kill tally, he pulls off the slickest of moves by professing his love for her. In a case of manga logic, Miyachi decides Kurosu is absolved of any sense of perversion and she starts to date the loser. Can his newfound happiness with a serial killer last?
By the end of the film it is possible you may not care.
If I had to describe the experience of watching this film, it would be “flat.”
Starting with a workman-like script from Izumi Takahashi, a master in adapting plays, manga, and novels into staid feature films – check out The Devil’s Path, Vanished, and One Night – the film spends an inordinate amount of time positioning two-dimensional characters into “moments” that can cause a clash – a little comedy via the outlandishness of the set-up, cute relationship goals, some conflict as the couple argue over morality and the emergence of a bland “good girl” love rival for Miyachi to compete with. Rinse and repeat. A subplot slowly emerges with a larger criminal conspiracy with a cliched gang of pretty-boys who do the typical snarling tough guy act but the culmination of their influence on the film is a flaccid showdown where Miyachi ably dispatches them.
Characterisation is limited to “cute if deranged” and this limitation extends to the performances which waver between perky and moody. Indeed, Miyaichi’s potential darkness has the sting taken out of the tail by Haruka Fukuhara’s childlike performance which stays just on the right side of irritating to make her watchable and not shatter any public image she may have. This is undemanding stuff.
In reality, this film was never intended to plumb the set-up for a serious story about living with killing and this is most felt in the way characters never face consequences over what happens. Miyaichi kills bad guys, so her murders are okay. Kurosu’s moral growth depends upon saving a girl who wants to be saved, so we can excuse his weaknesses and root for him. This lack of consequence is reinforced by the presence of a handler for the murderous Miyaichi in the form of Reina (Noriko Eguchi) and her clean-up crew. They create a safe space for massacres to happen and loose-ends to be tied up so the film can engage in a glossy oddball romance that plays itself out for a clean ending. In effect, this is an offbeat romance that won’t challenge audiences or the actors.
Maybe more adventurous direction (and a better script) might have saved this?
Director Kayoko Asakura is not a newbie but she definitely doesn’t have the power to override a production committee committed to collecting cash through inoffensive films. She probably had a tight budget and shooting period, too. What she delivers a technically solid work. It looks good and there isn’t a bad shot or any confusion to what is going on as it plays up the gulf between the central dweeb and his box-cutter assassin squeeze. The peephole effect is used but never really capitalised upon. Where she fails is in the action which is limp.
There is zero dynamism to the violence and what action is there is rather brief. Fukuhara’s character uses some form of aikido to subdue her targets for quick and clean kills where she slices open the carotid artery and CG blood sprays briefly and lifelessly. There is no complexity to the choreography and Miyaichi isn’t that interesting a character so it feels uninspired and by-the-numbers. Too tame for its own good. If the film were more cartoony or gory, if it went down the route of Naked Killer (1992) in its balls-to-the-wall attitude, MANDY (2018) and its psychedelia or From Today, It’s My Turn: The Movie (2020) with relentless manga gaggery, this experience might have had more of an impact. This lack of excitement coupled with a stolid script made for a dull experience and at nearly two hours without spectacle or much to say about the human condition, it is soporific as it slowly works through its story.