Sushi Girl (2012) [REVIEW]

The first time I had ever heard of Sushi Girl was at Star Wars Celebration VI. Mark Hamill was doing a Q & A and considering he’s been talking about Star Wars for the past 35 years, obviously he was excited to talk about other things that he’s done. This means the moderator highlighted his 1978 film Corvette Summer, which I’ve never seen, and a lot of stuff he’s done as a voice actor. It’s pretty impressive to look at all of Hamill’s credits to see how many cartoons and videogames that he’s lent his voice too, especially since most people haven’t really thought of him doing anything since Star Wars. This panel also afforded him the opportunity to show a clip from Sushi Girl, which showed him with long, stringy hair on the verge of hammering chopsticks into someone’s leg. Since this panel was all ages, and since we typically think of the actor who played Luke Skywalker as being somewhat wholesome, the clip left most of the audience shocked. I was just happy to see that Hamill still had an interest in doing movies that involved more than just voice work and was pretty interested to see if Hamill could convincingly play a psychopath. Luckily, in addition to the enjoyment of seeing Luke Skywalker acting like a nutcase, the movie as a whole ended up being pretty damned entertaining as well.

For those of you who have written Luke Skywalker vs. Atreyu fanfic, now you’ll get to see who would really win!

After being released from jail after six years for a diamond heist gone bad, Fish (Noah Hathaway) knows he has to answer for the diamonds that went missing. The mastermind behind the whole ordeal, Duke (Tony Todd), brings together all the parties involved in the heist for the opportunity to finally get their cut. Duke has prepared a sushi meal for everyone to eat, served off of a naked woman (Cortney Palm), but everyone knows that this is more than just a friendly reunion, and things move quickly to an interrogation of Fish. Duke allows everyone an opportunity to get information out of fish in whatever way seems most effective, whether it be allowing Max (Andy Mackenzie) to fill a sock with broken glass to attack Fish with or Crow (Mark Hamill) doing some impromptu dental work. The film cuts back and forth between the events that are unfolding with the interrogation and showing what took place during the heist, letting the audience learn more and more about what went down during the heist. None of the crooks really know who they can trust, between Fish not giving up and information, questioning whether or not thief Francis (James Duval) is wired, and wondering how Duke was able to get them all together in one room. As the movie ends, you learn you really shouldn’t have trusted anybody, and that nobody should have thought they could have made a clean escape from their crimes.

I’d like to sushi HER something or other! Lew comment lewd comment…sex? Is that how this works?

Between a majority of the movie taking place in one room, the ensemble cast, and the way the film jumps from the heist to the interrogations, Sushi Girl feels like a B List Reservoir Dogs. Pitching a movie as being similar to Reservoir Dogs could have been a disastrous attempt at filmmaking, but things really come together well for the filmmakers with a less than original plot. The movie’s biggest strength is easily its cast and the way they play off of one another. Tony Todd plays a role similar to what we’ve seen him play, as the strong and relatively silent presence, and Mark Hamill slipped in and out of the role of the Joker that he normally just voiced, but to a very entertaining result. The rest of the cast is fine, but it’s really the bit parts of the movie that let you know the filmmakers had a good eye for talent. Coming in with only around five lines apiece, you get to see Michael Beihn, Jeff Fahey, Danny Trejo, and even Sonny Chiba. I’m sure that were different filmmakers involved, we could’ve expected to see someone like Ron Jeremy in one of those roles for a cheap laugh, but the incorporation of these talented actors who might have never found major commercial success really made me respect what the filmmakers were attempting. Even though this movie isn’t technically a “horror” movie, more of a heist thriller, I had to include it in the horror category for the genre actors and for the gore. I don’t want to go into detail too much more about the more graphic scenes, but hopefully “shards of broken glass in a sock” is more than enough for you to consider checking it out. If you’re a fan of the B movies that the cast usually is involved in, if you like a good heist film, or even if you just want to Luke Skywalker as a big weirdo in a well-paced 98 minute film, I’d definitely recommend checking out Sushi Girl. Oh yeah, and Cortney Palm does a great job of being naked and covered in sushi.

Wolfman Moon Scale