Reviews

‘Ghost Killer’ Review: Stick With This Martial Arts Comedy

September 20th, 2024 | By Matthew Monagle

Life is hard as a martial arts agnostic – especially at film festivals. While Fantastic Fest tends to feature some standout action movies from around the world, those of us who are a bit more ambivalent on the genre can sometimes feel like we’re on the outside looking in. But if you’ve got a martial arts movie with a killer hook – say, a professional hitman who dies and uses someone else’s body to enact his revenge – you better be willing to get back on the horse. Enter Ghost Killer, the new film from martial arts maestro Kensuke Sonomura. 

Despite the danger of his line of work, hitman Masanori Kudo (Masanori Mimoto) believes himself pretty much untouchable – that is, until he is shot dead by an assailant whose face he can’t remember. So imagine his surprise when he suddenly finds himself in the apartment of Fumika Matsuoka (Akari Takaishi), a mild-mannered college student who becomes possessed by Kudo’s vengeful spirit.

Fumika wants nothing more than to go back to her simple life of television and job hunting, but Kudo has unfinished business before he can pass over. So the two come to an agreement: Fumika will lend the hitman her body as he researches his own murder, while Kudo will ensure that nothing bad happens to her when he’s driving. Soon, the two find themselves embroiled in a war between rival business factions and in the orbit of Toshihisa Kagehara (Mario Kuroba), Kudo’s former protege who has secrets of his own.

As a longtime stunt coordinator and fight choreographer in his native Japan, director Sonomura is already a household name among martial arts fans. Unfortunately, this list does not include me. While I’ve heard good things about the Baby Assassins series – the films are something of a Fantastic Fest regular – I often find myself bouncing off even the very best martial arts movies in the genre.

The problem is often one of pacing. While each individual fight sequence is a miracle of camerawork and kinesiology, even the standouts of the genre – such as Timo Tjahjanto’s The Night Comes for Us – struggle to translate on screen action into progressive storytelling. Fight sequences follow fight sequences, until the film’s pacing has somehow won each battle and lost the war. You are left with scenes you will revisit often on YouTube but that, within the context of the full feature, slow the pace down when they should instead make the story feel sharper.

And to be fair, for the first hour, Ghost Killer felt like much of the same. The early exchanges between Mimoto and Takaishi are played as broadly as possible, with the former mugging through the comedy beats and the latter underemoting to an equal degree. While some gags land – several jokes about Fukima not understanding the “rules” of possession are a nice inversion of expectations – the film struggles to differentiate itself from decades’ worth of body swap comedies. There are few surprises, and even the action sequences seem muted in scope.

Until they don’t. Had Ghost Killer maintained its uneven balance of action and comedy, the film might’ve lost me altogether – but Sonomura does what other action directors often fail to do and saves his best and most clearly differentiated action sequences for the climax.

While screenwriter Yugo Sakamoto’s script never dives too deep into the lives of any of its characters, Kudo slowly begins to worry over the mortality of his host. The idea that Kudo is writing checks that Fumika’s body has to cash is played for jokes early on, but one of the subtle joys of Ghost Killer is how gradually Sonomura dials that concern up. By the time that Kudo is facing off against the one opponent he’s not sure he can beat, there’s an undercurrent of dread elevating each piece of choreography that was missing up until now. Now each punch that lands ramps up the desperation – and the guilt.

Can a film make the case for itself with its last 30 minutes? Ghost Killer sure as hell can. Sonomura breaks out all the stops in the final sequences, showing that his reputation among martial arts fans is well-deserved. But even better, he uses these sequences as a means of bringing character and choreography into perfect alignment. It matters when Kudo and Fumuka pass the metaphysical baton between each other, and it matters even more when they stumble. And with Kuroba’s Kagehara there to serve as the straight man, the film earns the right to be recognized for its blend of action and comedy.

Ghost Killer ends up being a little bit of everything, with a healthy dollop of martial arts for the action fans and a little Korean thriller for the tragic-minded among us. And while the sum of the parts may still be better than the whole, the film keeps the energy pointing forward, with a dynamic conclusion that lands as well as any action movie from the past decade. If this is a sign of what’s to come from Sonomura as a filmmaker, then here’s to accepting the lows to enjoy the hell out of the highs. [3.5/5]