Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!

RipDelight This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

WillSushyMedia This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

lilpinkypops Plot: Most people are complaining about the Plot of the movie and with legitimate cause. The plot if anything is very linear and doesn't have those twists and turns that movie lovers enjoy. But in any case it still remains a solid storyline that isn't lacking in some huge manner that will leave you thinking the director was retarded. But perhaps the artistic genius that stands out in this movie is HOW the story is told.As far as cinematography each shot is perfectly balanced with a vivid splash of colours that gives off an end product which is a crisp clean feel to the whole movie.The brilliance of this movie is the extreme stereotypes of the actors as they (yakuza, knife expert, rock star, punk, rich upper class just to name a few) interact with each other. The pure enjoyment of this movie lays in watching all these total social failures/misfits do what they do best which is rob , kill and destroy. You will be laughing all through the movie as these characters do anything but what you expect from them.

furex My main impression with this movie is that something, somehow, has got lost on the way.It might be that the script has been adapted from a manga; some situations and some of the characters antics, dragged out from their context, look so wacky they end to be grotesque. Nonetheless, one of the strongest point of the movie are the characters themselves - Yamada in particular.The plot is the weakest one, it doesn't really make sense and I ended up suspecting that some elements has been simply cut because they didn't fit in the run time.However, I've seen this movie in Japanese with subtitles, so I really can't comment about the "witty dialogs" which are supposed to be another strong point.This movie is occasionally entertaining, but fails to leave a mark: it reminded me somehow of "I Went Down" (1997), which is definitely more entertaining than this one, tough.

Simon Booth A man called Samehada ("Shark Skin") steals some money from his Yakuza boss, and goes on the run. He crosses paths with a girl called Momojiri ("Peach Hip", or "Peach Ass" if you prefer) who is fleeing from a hotel manager who doesn't treat her well. They decide to throw their fortunes in together and try to escape the Yakuza and an assassin. The credit sequence introduces you to the cast of the characters you are about to meet, and it was very worrying... so many characters, I thought "it's going to get real confusing", but this is not the case at all. Even though there are a lot of characters, each one is well developed and unique - no problem following who they are and what their relationships are. It's one hell of a set of characters too... "colourful" hardly seems sufficiently descriptive, but they are all brilliantly conceived and portrayed. The main focus of the movie is the interplay between all these characters, with lots of sharp and witty dialogue throughout, and a generally black humour in the situations they get into and the way they get out of them. The movie is fast moving... very well paced in fact, and beautifully filmed & edited too. There's a little bit of violence, but nothing that's going the slightest concern to anybody who's seen some Kitano or Miike. Almost wholesome in fact It's difficult to say what makes the movie so good - it's not really any one thing - it's basically just an all-round clever, funny and exceptionally well made movie. Recommended!

Sat-2 I saw S.S. Man & P.H. Girl at the Hawaii International Film Festival in Nov. 98, and it took my breath away. This flick is the funniest, coolest, most invigorating piece of eye candy I've ever seen. Based on a Japanese manga, this debut film from Ishii (previously a director of Japanese commercials) is a road movie about a young woman on the run from her domineering and perverted uncle who meets up with a young man on the run from the stylish gangsters he's ripped off. The gangsters are the funniest, most outrageous, coolest bunch of baddies I've ever seen. Their dialogue is great, their costumes are incredible, and they're all so enjoyable to watch that it's always sad when one gets rubbed out. The uncle also sends someone after the pair on the run, a diminutive little freak who would totally steal the show in any other movie. Here, he just adds to the mix.I can't really describe how much I enjoyed this movie, but I remember that at the end of it, my face hurt from smiling so much. I think I was grinning during the entire film... If you're a fan of the films of Lynch, Tarantino, Jeunet, Boyle, Besson, the Coens, John Woo, Ringo Lam, and Tsui Hark, then you have GOT to see this movie. The funny thing about S.S. Man and P.H. Girl is that it's so over-the-top that you know it's a parody of the work of some of the above directors, but the damn thing is so much fun that it actually works as a "cool lovers on the run movie," and not just a parody of one. In fact, I thought it worked so well that it is now my favorite film of this genre. Tarantino was in the audience when I saw this movie, and when Ishii answered questions at the end of the film, and someone asked him who influenced him, he grinned at QT, and said (through his translator) something like "I think you know the answer to that." (subsequently QT hired Ishii to direct the animated sequence in Kill Bill, so I guess they hit it off). Perhaps the lesson here is that there's no such thing as too derivative.Some people note that the film has some slow moments. Interestingly, having seen the movie quite a few times by now, what sticks with me now are some of the quieter romantic and/or contemplative moments, especially the penultimate scene in the car where Samehada's former partner talks about seeing God.