Baby asses.

Baby Assassins sure the hell is a film. The product of director Yugo Sakamoto, Baby Assassins is a dark comedy about two teenage girls who live together. They argue, they eat, they have part time jobs, they don’t talk about their relationships because they don’t have them, and it’s basically just modern day teenage Japanese girl stuff. Not that I would know anything about that life. Also they are professional assassins. Because pimpin ain’t easy and being a hitman is kinda expensive when you go off the books every now and then.

The film stars Saori Izawa as Mahiro Fukagawa, and How About Notflix readers may recognize Izawa from her western performance doing stunts in John Wick: Chapter 4 as well as Alice in Borderland. Mahiro is a functioning (questionable) sociopath who enjoys killing people and has trouble existing in the real world. Her roommate Chisato Sugimoto (Akari Takaishi) is more adapt to fitting in with a crowd, making herself likeable, and generally infiltrating places she needs to be. She also enjoys killing people.

Baby Assassins is about the two girls being told that they need to live together and get side jobs in order to pull in some extra cash and look like functioning members of society, because two teenage girls who don’t work and pull in an income is probably going to turn some heads. They also take on hit jobs and kill people, all the while acting like teenage girls in Japan. They read manga, eat noodle, complain about having to do chores.

It’s a very laid back movie with not a whole lot of action going on, at least not until the last 10 minutes. There’s a lot of talking, lazying around, waiting, and more talking. The bulk of the movie goes into the territory of what do assassins do when they’re not on the job and the answer is hang out and eat hot pot and ramen. They do each other favors, get annoyed when one gets called into work in the middle of a hit job to make waffles.

In a way this feels like the kind of film Kevin Smith would make if he was Japanese. It’s people in a pretty crazy situation who never stop bitching about what would be considered normal life shit in those situations. Like the cleaner who complains to Chisato about how she shoots people in the head and how much extra cleanup that requires, and how he’s told her time after time to shoot them in the heart. They have a whole back and forth about the bill for the cleanup, which hitman insurance refuses to cover because it’s not an official job.

On the other side you have Ippei Hamaoka (Yasukaze Motomiya) who is a Yakuza guy, and played Kosei Shishido in Like A Dragon Gaiden. Hamaoka is an old school Yakuza dude but he also realizes that the old ways are pretty much dead and the Yakuza needs to future proof itself by getting into the 21st century. Less prostitution, more cute maid cafes. That kind of stuff. He goes around with his son Kazuki (Satoshi Uekiya) and his daughter Himari (Mone Akitani) who is also a sociopathic killer who takes great pleasure in learning the Yakuza craft like shooting a dude in the head. It’s a great father-daughter bonding moment.

But Hamaoka is also a total asshole at heart and it becomes his undoing.

Baby Assassins is a fun, enjoyable movie. If you’re coming into this expecting an action-packed thriller you’re going to be sorely disappointed. Except for the last ten minutes when the girls kick it into gear and start beating some serious ass. I have the same pajama pants that Izawa wears during part of the movie.

You can also find Baby Assassins on Tubi.

Rating: A