Baby Assassins: 2 Babies introduces new characters, new adult responsibilities, more reasons to laugh, and is all the better for it.
Baby Assassins: 2 Babies opens on a car. A parked car. A pair of new characters sat inside. One – named Makoto (Tatsuomi Hamada) – is a little childish, and physically emotive. The other – named Yuri (Joey Iwanaga) – is more mature and reserved. If you’ve already guessed that these two are best friends turned assassin partners, give yourself a gold star.
Following Yuri and Makoto, the first ten minutes or so of Baby Assassins: 2 Babies establish the tone of the movie as a whole really quite well. There’s some wonderfully delivered sh*t-talking that feels like a comedian’s take on a Sang-soo movie, there’s a beautifully choreographed fight scene that feels like an articulate bouncer’s take on a Netflix movie, and then there’s a food-eating, plot-expositioning, diner-set scene that gets the story underway.
The story being: Yuri and Makoto are hitmen subcontractors who want to climb the rungs, and work full-time for the Assassin’s Guild. They hear a rumour that if a team of guild assassins die… Well, their membership space opens up. So that’s what this new pair fancy doing – killing some hired killers, and taking their spot at the guild. If you’ve already guessed that Yuri and Makoto then happen to set their sights on our Chisato (Akari Takaishi) and Mahiro (Saori Izawa), that’s worth another gold star.
Writing of Chisato and Mahiro, a quick scene with them shows they’re still coming up painfully against the bureaucracy of both being an adult and an assassin, and that’s it. That’s all the setup set up. Whereas in Baby Assassins Chisato and Mahiro were looking for part-time jobs, with the goings-on of a Yakuza family operating in the background, in Baby Assassins: 2 Babies Chisato and Mahiro find themselves with bills to pay, later facing a suspension from hitwomen work, whilst Yuri and Makoto hunt after them in the background.
From this foundation, Baby Assassins: 2 Babies runs similarly to the first one – like a particularly excited sketch movie, bounding from scenario to scenario: a smoke grenade accidentally goes off inside the flat, Chisato and Mahiro rush to the bank before it closes only to be delayed by an arm robbery, Atarashii Gakko! suddenly appear for a hilarious cameo, and more.
This means that Baby Assassins: 2 Babies will be a hard sell to people who like their sequels to be all post-cliffhanger plotlines, developing characters, and changing circumstances. But, those who, like me, enjoyed the first flick, and are attracted to the idea of a sequel being a chance to revisit the one concept, a chance to fill out a new movie with previously unconsidered opportunities, and ideas not thought of until now, are going to find little excuse not to watch Baby Assassins: 2 Babies.
What I could go in circles trying to articulate is this: I think Baby Assassins: 2 Babies is a pretty good movie, and I had a right jolly time watching it. With only a few minutes extra on its predecessor, the film has noticeably more sequences, and I found most to be sharper, funnier, and quicker. It is, maybe, a perfect sequel.
With the 2021 movie, I thought the raison d’être was mainly found in the relationship between Chisato and Mahiro, and the power of that friendship to feel honest and genuine, despite the exaggerated film world surrounding it. But here, in Baby Assassins: 2 Babies, I feel as though many of the other aspects have been improved to match this highlight. The side characters have more personality, the gags are more frequent, landing often with confidence, and the dialogue has either been expertly improvised or written by a stoner, millennial Noёl Coward.
Quirky killer movies may well be a saturated market but it’s its specific, lovable vibe that puts Baby Assassins: 2 Babies a touch above. If I was prone to hyperbole, which my recent Coward comparison shows I’m obviously not, I might even go so far as to write that the movie is ‘like lightning in a bottle’.
It’s not all positives though, of course. There are negatives too. For instance, I thought that the music during the final showdown was poorly handled. There you go, that ought to balance the scales. Perhaps I shall take a gold star myself for being such a fair and thorough movie reviewer.
Baby Assassins 2 will be released on Blu-ray™ and Digital on April 2, 2024.
