Modern action cinema owes a lot to The Raid and John Wick as mythic revenge arcs littered with bone-crunchingly innovative action choreography that reshaped the genre. But somewhere along the way, their imitators forgot that martial arts movies used to be fun. Not just thrilling, but fun. Jackie Chan wasn’t scowling through grief; he was juggling inanimate objects and sliding down Christmas decorations. Jet Li cracked jokes between kicks. Bruce Lee had comedic swagger and soul mixed into his wataahs. Their films weren’t all Greek tragedies like today’s action cinema; they were action comedies, and they were glorious. Enter Baby Assassins.
While rewatching The Raid, finding myself nostalgically starved for old school action cinema, I stumbled upon Baby Assassins on Tubi. This Japanese action comedy film trilogy didn’t just scratch my itch; it, and its upcoming Prime Video miniseries Baby Assassins: Everyday, is my new obsession.
Directed and written by Yugo Sakamoto, Baby Assassins follows two assassins, Chisato Sugimoto (Akari Takaishi) and Mahiro Fukagawa (Saori Izawa), who are tasked with playing housemates to strengthen their work chemistry while partnered for their guild’s contract killings. The only problem is they’re both very different brands of weird girls who mix like oil and water. Mahiro, the hand-to-hand specialist, is a soft-spoken, game-obsessed, L Lawliet-type who struggles to make normal conversation without sounding so matter-of-fact that she might as well be an alien on her first day pretending to be human. Meanwhile, Chisato is a loud, extroverted gremlin of a girl who says whatever’s on her mind.
Basically, Baby Assassins is an unofficial live-action adaptation of Lycoris Recoil, a cute girls do hitman things anime by Cloverworks that Hideo Kojima, acclaimed cinephile, accidentally stumbled upon and is rightfully obsessed with. However, by the time I hit the second film, Baby Assassins 2: Babies (my favorite one), the series went further beyond Lycoris Recoil's levels of “Are they?” sapphic underpinnings and went full-blown Nana with how gay gay homosexual gay Chisato and Mahiro are for one another.
Throughout the trilogy, I witnessed their dynamic evolve in real time from “stay out of my way” begrudging coworker to mutual-chin-cupping-to-wipe-away-blood-smears from each other's cheeks, intimate “don’t die on me” forehead-touching, and making goofy faces at each other during waist-high shootouts. The trilogy’s narrative arcs, which make up a majority of their runtime, boil down to “We try to get normal jobs. We try to pay rent on time. We try to enjoy our workcation birthday party without catching stray bullets.” It’s essentially a workplace wives version of Meals on Wheels, ditching the sigma male stoicism of Wick-clones for whimsy, cringe, and fruity roommate chaos.
Instead of perpetuating the Wick-ification of action cinema, Baby Assassins mocks it. The girls openly clown on edgy one-liner villains and one-dimensional tough guys, calling out their cringeworthy lines in real time. As someone raised on Lee’s philosophy, Chan’s slapstick, and Li’s charm, Baby Assassins was a breath of fresh air because it’s rich with low-stakes hijinks and hard-hitting action choreography with coveted long shots to let its stunt crew, especially Izawa, show off their stuff uninhibited. All the while, it’s an action comedy that doesn’t take itself too seriously.
And, most importantly, the action slaps. Each film’s finale fight scene is like a hearty dessert at the end of a four-course meal—long takes, inventive choreography, and zero-overediting to be found. In fact, Mahiro’s stunt work is so phenomenal that John Wick 4 director Chad Stahelski tapped her to do stunts for Rina Sawayama as Akira. Takaishi, meanwhile, brings her anime stage production chops from Toilet-bound Hanako-kun, Fate/Grand Order, and Demon Slayer to the role of Chisato, enriching her gun-girl persona with “oh, you know ball” levels of otaku insight and deep-pull observations. Chisato is also just based about most things, like Twitter being a hellhole.
Action movies could stand to be less of a downer, and Baby Assassins is the cure. You can be silly and still kick ass.
