xBeing that "Exploitation" is generally considered a narrow but definitive arena of filmmaking, one with not-so definitive borders if you ask me, I went into Red Handcuffs wondering how squarely inside this first Zero Woman movie would sit. I was surprised and pleased.
A mixture of Dirty Harry and Caged Heat, (I haven't actually seen the movie Caged Heat but there is little mystery, to be sure) the movie opens as Zero Woman Rei (Miki Sugimoto) lights up the dance floor at a horrendously dated discotheque in mid-1970's Tokyo. In no time at all we realize she's not your average dancing queen but an undercover agent poised to willingly throw back a doctored drink in effort to hook a European diplomat bent on a violent encounter at his apartment. Effortlessness cum ruthlessness. Oh, she's good. Rei winds up in prison for her efforts though—ultimately her handlers are forced to cut a deal for her release when the daughter of a Presidential candidate is taken hostage.
Honestly, movies like this nature tread a fine line; they can move easily from ridiculousness to repugnance in lesser capable or even willful hands, and from action-camp like Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! to the more savage of revenge stories like that of Day of the Woman, so I commend director Yukio Noda for maintaining his focus with his episode. I was also surprised it didn't turn out to be a cartoonish urban outlaw sub-culture flick. Sure, it's from and of that era, but it aspires to be more that a cursory western [s]exploitation romp. That's not to say it's free of gratuitous nudity and violence. This one is expressly NOT for the kiddies—it's ultra-violent, sleazy, comical, farcical, and crude—consecutively and all at once. Quite the experience all told.
Now the second episode of Zero Woman doesn't appear for some 20 years, so it will be interesting to find out how and where Rei materializes.
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