Review: Yugo Sakamoto's A Janitor.

A Janitor is a 2021 v-cinema action thriller directed by Yugo Sakamoto, who would go on to create the Baby Assassins film series, and stars Seiji Fukushi as Fukami, an assassin and high school janitor assigned to look over the daughter of his boss, Yui.

I went into this film with extremely low expectations. Every review I would read would make this film out to be some sort of super ultra mega bad monstrosity that would waste my time, but I did end up liking it far more than I thought I would.

Is this a great film? No, but it's not that bad either, it's just. Average. It's what I expected from Yugo Sakamoto, I feel roughly the same with Baby Assassins, I found both of these films pretty well-rounded in all aspects even despite it's flaws.

I think this film's greatest strength is the cinematography, just barely better than the action. This film is genuinely beautiful in a lot of shots, there's great lighting, great angles, great blueness too. No seriously, 90% of this film is blue, yet it doesn't really feel forced and I personally stopped registering the blueness early on.

Fukushi's performance isn't really all that notable in my opinion, he kinda falls flat in personality for the majority of the film, his entire character is honestly just "Badass cool guy who smokes a lot." While I am a fan of that type of character, I felt really indifferent to Fukami.

The supporting cast is better in my opinion, they're full of very charismatic and distinct characters. They're mostly all either crazy, loud, immature or all three with a couple more serious characters sprinkled in here and there.

Most notably out of the cast would be the likes of Akari Takaishi and Saori Izawa, who's characters serve as a prototype of their future characters in Baby Assassins, sharing the same personality yet remain separate characters.

The action remains the most entertaining part of the film, after spending a solid 40 minutes with minor action and a handful of kills sprinkled now and then, the film suddenly ramps up greatly and spends the final 30ish minutes filled with action.

I'm not sure who did the fight choreography, but I need that man to work on more films. The martial arts in this film is insanely entertaining, it's fast and manic yet remains stable enough to not drag it out.

Every fight showcases the personality of the character in their actions to an extent, some are coordinated and each swing is fully calculated, and some are just wild crazy moves that look like they're just winging it and hope they land a hit.

The gunfights are not bad either, it's full of tension with each shot fired, it feels like Fukami could get shot any second, and when they do get up close, it enters a gun-fu like sequence and lessens the tension in exchange for more energy. It honestly balances just fine.

While this film is definitely flawed, I wouldn't call it a bad film. I enjoyed it for the most part, and while I would say it's worth watching I wouldn't recommend you to see it right away.

If you like Baby Assassins, Yugo Sakamoto, or want a relatively short action film (86 minutes), I would recommend it.

That's all for now, Love and Peace!