The Janitor (2021)

First come, first served or first killed, whichever comes first

A shy assassin assigned to guard a yakuza's teenage daughter finds himself in the middle of a revenge fueled war that takes place in a nearly empty school. Undercover as A Janitor, he ends up having to clean up more than empty juice boxes.

Fukima Akira saw his father murdered when he was just a boy. His father's blood brother, Majima Yoshiki, took him in as a son and trained him to be an assassin. Majima's biological son, Honda, grew up to develop his own gang to oppose his father. Eventually, Akira finds out that Yoshiki had his father murdered so that he could take over the gang and honor dictated Akira now had to murder his father figure. Other leaders were involved, including Honda, because everyone wanted to take over Yoshiki's turf. Yui, the daughter, was needed to biometrically open the vaults thus creating the deadly situation at the school with only Akira between her and 9 assassins.

The film bordered on the absurd at times with a baby faced serial killer, two female high school assassins, a geriatric assassin, two bozo bro assassins and one that resembled a terminator. Some of the acting could be over the top. Honda, looked like an IT specialist, but what he specialized in was killing, especially his own men. I kept expecting to hear him say, "have you tried turning it off and turning it on?" This was a kill or be killed free for all, where the only ones who would be paid were the ones who completed the job first. First come, first serve. What the assassins learned the hard way was that the gentle spoken janitor had no intention of letting anyone collect a pay day.

A Janitor (the most commonly used title name) looked like it was cheaply made. The school shots were that blown out blue/gray and white that many Jdramas seem fond of. Scenes with Yui and her father having dinner, steak of course, murderous villains tend to like their rare beef, were tinted red.

Some of the scenes were gratuitous in nature, and fair warning, there were a few random high school kids murdered. At times the fighting seemed brutal and real at others times it could seem ludicrous. Suppressing fire is one thing, wasting bullets shooting at something you can't see when you have limited ammo is something else, something stupid. Speaking of stupid, if you have an amazing hiding place don't crawl out in front of the villains in plain sight.

The acting was all over the place. Fukushi Seiji did a fine job as the conflicted and loyal Akira. Imou Haruka asYui had the tough task of playing the high school girl getting dragged all over the place with little agency of her own. Most of the rest of the cast set their acting on crazy overkill.

Despite the limited acting and sets, the movie was entertaining at times. Like a Godzilla movie, the monster didn't show up until 40 minutes into the story, at which point the action began and it became more interesting. Ultimately, a cute assassin wasn't enough for me with the huge gaps in logic though. The film is part of the Baby Assassins world which I know nothing about. So if that franchise is something you enjoyed or you like yakuza assassins pummeling and shooting each other, this might be something to try. It is thankfully as short as much of the logic in the movie, clocking in under 90 minutes.



9/26/22

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