Synopsis:
Joker is hired to rescue a kidnapped Chinese girl named Liwa. Along the way, they hijack a taxi driver's car, not knowing he's one of the bad guys after Liwa. He ditches Joker and re-kidnaps Liwa. Joker gets ready to settle the score once and for all. Many squibs and massive butchering of the English language ensue...

REVIEW:
I like Hitoshi Ozawa. He seems like a really hard working action star. I mean, the guy wrote, edited, produced, directed, and starred in this film. Sadly though, this movie is quite bad, but I don't blame Ozawa for that. In saying that, this film is still better than most American direct-to-video action garbage.

For one thing, the production values are non-existent. Taking a cue from Atsugi Muroga's Score (which also starred Hitoshi Ozawa), Shoot My Darlin' was filmed entirely in the Phillipines, mainly because the costs are so low. Unlike Score, however, this film lacks any polish whatsoever. In fact, the whole thing is incredibly unpolished, which is sad because I'd expect a little more from Hitoshi Ozawa.

Then there's the plot and characterization, or lack thereof. The story is paper thin and has been done to death millions of times before. There's nothing original here at all. The characters, with the possible exception of Ozawa's Joker, lack any depth and come across as 2D cutouts. This isn't helped by the horrible dialogue either, which ranges from Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, and terribly butchered English.

Ozawa is definitely cool, but I know he can appear in better movies (and he has...Dead or Alive, Score). The guy deserves a bigger budget to work with his ideas. If that happened, I know he could churn out a quality, albeit cliched, action flick. Vivian Hsu is really annoying in the film, but she's good enough eye candy that she didn't bother me that much.

The entire supporting cast is forced to speak English most of the time, and there's no doubt in my mind that any of them even know the language. It truly is that bad and half the time the English dialogue is barely intelligible. Of course, none of them would be good actors anyway. The dialogue is as basic as can be and seems like it was dumbed down so as to be understood by the mentally challenged.

I mentioned the bad, now let me mention the good. The good news is that, while not being spectacular, the action scenes are well done enough to make the film moderately enjoyable. The first action scene is so-so, but the second one is the definite highlight of the film, shot in slow motion with some nice opera-style music playing. The film seemingly has four big finales. The shootout at the motel is good, but then it moves into a dark cave and the action becomes unrecognizable due to the darkness. Then we're treated to a nice helicopter/jeep chase and finally "a couple days later" (as the movie tells us), we get the real finale - a generic shootout in a meeting room. The end.

It's kind of sad that this film didn't turn out even half as good as Score, since the films are pretty similar. While Score is probably the best Reservoir Dogs homage (RE: knockoff) I've ever seen, Shoot My Darlin' is just an amalgamation of bad action movie cliches with not enough redeemable factors to warrant a viewing.

DVD Specs:
Panorama Entertainment
Region 3
Letterbox
Languages: The wierdest mix ever 2.0
Subtitles: Chinese, English (and the occasional burnt-in Japanese subtitle whenever the awful non-Japanese dialogue is present)
Extras: NOTHING!

Transfer:
Well, what we get here is a beautiful transf...oh wait, this is crap. I've seen lovely letterbox transfers before, but this one is nowhere near even being average. Everything is way to dark and overly soft looking and lacks contrast. It's a pretty clean print, but that doesn't help it from looking poor.

Sound:
The good news is that it sounds really clear. The bad news is that you'll be hearing all the awful dialogue throughout the film. The sound is in stereo, but you really don't need anything more for this film. It serves its purpose and is probably better than the film actually deserves.

Subtitles:
Normally, I don't mention subtitles, but these deserve special mentioning. They're absolutely terrible. The sentences all seem to be basic conversation stuff and everything seems dumbed down, with tons of errors. The burnt-in Japanese subtitles don't help either.

Extras:
None. Nothing at all, not even a trailer. This could be a good thing though.

Overall:
A bad movie with an equally poor DVD. Avoid the film unless you're a die-hard Hitoshi Ozawa fan and even if you are, avoid the film anyways. Although a couple of the action scenes are decent, nothing sets my world on fire. There was one scene I did like though, that involved a motel clerk watching Score (which starred Ozawa) right before Hitoshi arrives at the front door. That actually caused me to laugh, but that's the extent of the enjoyment I had with this film.