1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
You Failed Again, February 11, 2006
This review is from: The Man Behind the Scissors (DVD)
There are many types of people in the world. Some make you feel comfortable while others make your skin crawl. Some fill you with energy while others suck it from you like a vampire. In Hasami Otoko, Toyokawa Etsushi's character Yasunaga denotes pure terror.
A cool collected killer, Yasunaga hones the blades of pairs of scissors until they are razor sharp. He desires to make the perfect kill. To kill with one clean pierce with no mess and to leave his victim a pristine corpse. Yasunaga is not a rapist or a mutilator; he is only a killer searching for the perfect kill. However, he will not just kill any girl. The girls he kills must be not only attractive, but strong in their studies as well. With such high criteria, it is obvious that finding appropriate victims is not that easy, so Yasunaga enlists the help of Chika, a pretty, but downtrodden woman who not only searches for Yasunaga's victims at her job, but who also accompanies Yasunaga when he kills. Although she thinks it is horrific, Chika is so subservient to Yasunaga that she would probably kill herself if he asked her to. In fact it seems she is a bit jealous of the murdered girls because Yasunaga seems to deem them worthy of being killed while he lets her live.
One night, after a day of scouting out Yasunaga's next victim, Yasunaga and Chika attempt to learn more about the area in which the intended victim lives. However, instead of garnering new information, they find her dead with a pair of scissors protruding from her throat. It seems someone else wanted to murder the girl and pass it off as if the Scissor Man had done it instead. With this knowledge, Yasunaga and Chika begin their own search for their intended murder victim's killer.
Filmed by the same director who created Evil Dead Trap and Angel Guts, Scissor Man is a relatively bloodless film for one about a serial murderer. Also, the film is a bit campy. The dialogues between the detectives will almost make one cringe with their Scooby Doo-esque findings of clues and summarizations of who perpetrated the crime. However, despite this, there are some parts that shine. While Toyokawa Etsushi's acting is quite wooden, his character gives the semblance of a man who although calm and collected could burst into violence at any moment. Some scenes are almost painful to watch because one can almost feel the violence emanating from his being. Also Aso Kumiko does a good job portraying a woman so broken by hardships that she is willing to do anything for a man because there is some chance that he might show some affection for her. Obsessed with death and dieing, Chika attempts suicide several times in the film by doing such things as self-asphyxiation and poisoning herself only to be reminded by Yasunaga that she failed again. Quite strong moments for a relatively weak film, but they are really not enough to make one watch this film again.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
I had a lot of fun watching this, June 2, 2010
This review is from: The Man Behind the Scissors (DVD)
Random acts of weirdness turn out to be clues to an unsurprising, yet reasonable reveal. The Japanese are my favorite at plowing through absurdity with a straight face. The director employs a few visual flourishes to remind us that this isn't a real crime thriller. The cops provide comic relief while the bad guys are almost frozen in their steadfast psychological drama. Asô Kumiko and Abe Hiroshi are present for credibility. I love Asô Kumiko and the film is mostly hers. She's pretty low key, doesn't swing her arms much when she walks, but she's still engaging, becoming more so as the film progresses and you get onboard with her and her hilarious attempts at suicide. The moral of the story needs a bucketload of salt but who cares? It's not laugh out loud funny but it's a good dark comedy of inner-child pain and murder. Not a lot, but a little, blood. The goriest thing has to be the nicotine stew Asô cooks up for herself.
The Man Behind the Scissors
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