A couple of weeks ago they showed the Japanese movie Returner on Swedish TV. I hadn’t heard about it but I had to watch it. It’s a movie about a girl named Milly who in the future goes back in time to the present day to save the world by killing the first alien who crashes on Earth and thereby stopping the war that has all but eliminated mankind in the future. She gets help in doing this from a hit man she happens to meet. I know, it sounds pretty lame. But I was pleasantly surprised by this movie. It’s one of those movies that are “easy-watching”. You don’t have to invest that much in the movie but still get a pleasant feeling after watching it. I actually downloaded the movie two days after and re-watched it (though the Swedish subtitles are much better than the English ones) and I enjoyed it almost as much the second time around.

Anne Suzuki who plays Milly is very cute. She has a nice smile. This was the first movie with Takeshi Kaneshiro that I’ve seen. He plays the hit man Miyamoto. A couple of weeks after watching Returner I watched House of Flying Daggers which is a part of the Asian Masterpieces DVD box I bought recently. You’ve probably seen it, it’s a Chinese martial arts movie by the director of Hero, starring among others Ziyi Zhang. The movie starts with a scene in which a man is being entertained by some girls before Ziyi makes her first appearance. I thought the man looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite place him. Then he laughed and immediately I got the picture of Miyamoto from Returner in my mind where he goes “Daggra? haha” (Daggra is the name of the aliens) and then I realized that it in fact was Takeshi Kaneshiro. I wasn’t expecting to see him in a Chinese movie speaking Mandarin. That was also a good movie, but not as “easy-watching” as Returner.

I went to check the name of the actress who plays Milly (Anne Suzuki) on IMDb after watching Returner the first time and I found it very amusing to read people’s comments there. A lot of people were claiming that there were plot holes in the movie because Milly did this and that and “that’s not how time travel works”… Perhaps it’s not how time travel works in other movies. No one knows how time travel works and even if we did it would be kind of like saying that kung-fu movies have plot holes because that’s not how gravity works.

Anyway, I just bought the Swedish DVD (and it seems I got a good price too at 40% discount, the price just went up again). I hope the subtitles are as good as the Swedish TV subtitles. I’m going to re-watch this movie again after posting this.