Japan’s king of action comedy, Yugo Sakamoto, made a rare venture into nonviolence with this year’s female friendship comedy “Nemurubaka: Hypnic Jerks,” which featured just a single, well-executed dropkick.
The break from the genre grind seems to have done this former wunderkind good. “Flame Union,” Sakamoto’s latest film and the third in a series about the “legendary hitman Kunioka,” has the familiar gags, gunplay and martial arts heroics, but the director has reined in his tendency, seen in his hit “Baby Assassins” series, for comic bickering between the two leads that resembles a rambling manzai (comedy duo) routine.
Sakamoto’s “legend,” the hulky Masayuki Kunioka (Masayuki Ino), and his hapless fellow hitman Takuya Manaka (Takuya Matsumoto) may squabble, but their exchanges are mostly brief, pointed and funny. And while the on-screen combat, directed by action choreographer Hiroto Kakiuchi, explodes with intricately staged force, it also builds so we can see how all moving parts come together in the final battle royal, which is like a lethal version of tag team wrestling. The film, in fact, could serve as an excellent fighting arts instructional video.
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