“The Japanese Karate Kid” was how this was billed, the other film I went to see at the Terracotta Festival. High Kick Girl is DV shot, low-budget and pretty much what you’d expect: high on action, low on plot, acting and drama. But it never pretends to be anything other than a all-action B-movie, and delivers all you could want on that account.

SPOILER ALERT

Kei Tsuchiya (played by real-life karate champion Rina Takeda) is the star of her karate dojo. Bored of her master’s disciplined approach, she goes ‘black belt hunting’, kicking the ass of every karate champion she can find. This leads her to try out for the Destroyers, a twisted gang of martial arts experts for hire.

That paragraph is largely redundant, since halfway through the focus switches to Kei’s sensei instead. That’s something of a refreshing surprise, something that occurs several times in the film — usually by shortening anticipated fights with some slick moves. For the majority of the film though, it’s by the numbers stuff, and at times not executed greatly. It’s rare that I’d fault a film for not following the American template, but I did feel at times that the emotional impact and audience anticipation could have been raised with a few cheap Hollywood trick (it should be noted that the movie hasn’t even been released in Japan yet, so it’s possible this wasn’t the final version).

But this is beside the point, since it’s just about getting from one action scene to another. The fights are fantastic, and almost realistic (a few 20-yard flying kicks aside) — a virtue of having a cast of martial artists. If there’s another criticism of the film, it’s the overuse of action replays, but this does work on a couple of occasions — particularly the idiot Bruce Lee henchmen at the end. That’s just one of several amusing scenes and incredible feats of athleticism from the cast. So it doesn’t really engage you, and it’s not gonna set the world on fire, but I had a lot of fun watching this.