Kung fu fanatics would love to see another action packed movie like the Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle. Now here’s another version of these films produced by Stephen Chow, “Shaolin Girl.” It is a Japanese film released on April, 2008 and was directed by Katsuyuki Motohori. It recounts a story of a girl named Rin Sakurazawa who was played by Ko Shibasaki who is also from Battle Royale and Dororo fame.
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Rin is a student of the Shaolin temple. She has to return to her little Japanese town to take over her late grandfather’s Dojo (a school for training Japanese arts of self-defense). However, the school has been abandoned by its students including her former mentor who was played by Yosuke Eguchi.
Rin, who have endured many years of training at the Shaolin Martial arts, would like to share what she learned to everyone. Unfortunately no one wants to join in her quest to spread the philosophy of Kung fu except for Minmin Ryu (played by Kitty Zhang Yuqi) who is a lacrosse player. Here, there was an agreement between the two lovely girls. Rin would teach Minmin, but in the condition that Rin would become a player of their team. Now we encounter the difficult side of Rin, who wants only to showcase her Kung fu talent in playing Lacrosse. She doesn’t know and understand the meaning of teamwork. In their first game together, they lost because of Rin’s shortcoming. But in time, Rin learned to control her emotions and eventually became the team’s string of victories. In return her team helped her restore the dojo. Just as when everything seems to be on her side, the real action began when Rin met her adversary from a dark incident in the past that she knew nothing about.
Though Shaolin Girl was produced by Stephen Chow of Shaolin Soccer it didn’t turned out to be as expected. The fighting scene was slow and the sequences are incomparable to the animation of the latter movie and Kung fu Hustle. Also if you’ll notice there was even a part were some fighters fell in the pool but remained dry when they got up and continued fighting. Is this a magic pool or what?
With their attempt to make something different, Shaolin Girl movie became direction less. First is the use of sports that has no connection to the ending of the story. Second is the part where she found the other dojo students (some casts of Shaolin Soccer), but this scene doesn’t even matter because they too were gone not even giving use to their character. Unlike the casts of Shaolin Soccer team who were there from start until the end and you’ll know why they should be part of the movie. Last but not the least is Rin’s adversaries who lack the credibility to be real villains.
