Ritânâ

Plot synopsis:
Milly (Anne Suzuki) is a soldier from 2084, where humanity is on the verge of extinction because of the "Daggra", an alien race. In mankind's final stronghold in Tibet, Milly leaps into a newly built time portal just before the fortress is overrun. The portal sends her to 2002, where her mission is to kill the first Daggra, who faked a crash landing, and stop him from signaling his invasion fleet.
Milly lands in the aftermath of a shootout in Tokyo Bay, Yokohama, Japan, where a hitman named Miyamoto (Takeshi Kaneshiro) holds the murderous Triad mobster Mizoguchi (Goro Kishitani) at gunpoint. Her arrival allows the mobster to escape and Miyamoto takes Milly, who he thinks he accidentally shot, back to his place. She was saved by a plate of metal in her coat. She tapes a tiny bomb to his neck and threatens him into helping her on her mission. Miyamoto has a personal score to settle with Mizoguchi, who killed his childhood friend by kidnapping him and selling off his organs.
That night, Miyamoto sees Milly cleaning up his trenchcoat on a coat hanger, so he tells her to go back to sleep. The next morning he discovers photos of himself and a newspaper article on his death. He shows these to his weapons supplier Shi (Kirin Kiki), who tells him it's an elaborate trick the Triads wouldn't waste their time on.
With Shi's help, they track down where the alien spaceship crashed, but it was taken away to the National Institute of Space Science. They try to get to the spaceship to kill the alien, but Mizoguchi arrives and tries to take the facility over. Milly is surprised at the alien, it is not what she expected. She hesitates to kill it as Mizoguchi advances on the lab.
Using Miyamoto as its mouthpiece, the alien says it wants to go home. Milly realizes that she has been lied to. The humans and not the aliens, started the war which has been destroying the human race. They started it when they captured and killed the alien. She now knows they have to stop Mizoguchi as he wants the alien technology to take over the world. Following the destruction of the Space Science lab, Mizoguchi and his goons take the alien and its ship. Meanwhile, Miyamoto and Milly regroup for the next part of her mission.
The duo again confronts Mizoguchi at an abandoned oil rig, where they rescue the alien. Surviving a huge explosion, a bloodied Mizoguchi threatens to kill them all for ruining his plans. However, his bullets hit an invisible force field. Miyamoto quickly grabs the gun and kills Mizoguchi. Before they can figure out where the force field came from a Daggra craft, disguised as a Boeing 747-400 airliner arrives, having received the alien's distress signal. The Daggra take their wounded comrade and leave Earth. As the future war has ceased to exist, Milly slowly disappears.
Shortly after the incident, Miyamoto decides to give up his life of violence and hands in his guns to Shi. While walking home, he is confronted by a thug whose life he had spared earlier at Tokyo Bay. Realizing that he is weaponless, Miyamoto is helpless as the thug shoots him. The thug walks away, assuming that Miyamoto is dead. A little later, Miyamoto staggers up and finds his life was saved by a plate of metal similar to Milly's. The plate has a written message by Milly, telling him she has repaid him. Miyamoto recalls the night Milly messed around with his trenchcoat. While Miyamoto and Milly were asleep, a second, future Milly traveled from the future and slipped the metal plate into his trenchcoat before returning to her timeline. On her way out, she accidentally drops the newspaper article on Miyamoto's death.

Tags: neo noir, murder, cult, violence, flashback, action, revenge, entertaining, sci-fi

Review:
The day was set to end, I had two videos in my hands I had just rented an hour before, one of them was "Lost in Translation" and the other one was "The Returner".To make a long story short, my attitude turned pretty sour after viewing the more anticipated "Lost in Translation" and turned on "The Returner" thinking it would be pretty cheesy....turns out, I was completely wrong.The Returner, even though it obviously borrows a lot of ideas from other films, is incredibly entertaining.
The main characters Miyamoto and Milly were incredibly engaging, the bad guy (with his "Vash the Stampede" look and gun) was pretty cool, the storyline (filled with some comedy, drama, action, and a science fiction twist of course) was not that bad (some parts were a lot more enjoyable than others), the execution of the directing was what caught my attention, and the overall impression I got from it was completely passable and whole-fully entertaining.Even the ending and the soundtrack was superb.
The movie's plot is a rip-off of countless American blockbusters (just on first viewing I see E.T., The Terminator, Back to the Future, ID4, Stargate, Dune, The Matrix, MI:2, and even a little bit of The X-Files) and there's nothing really all that special in the way the story is executed but in general most Asian action flicks don't have much plot so I at least count it a blessing that ripping off all the aforementioned films gives the film enough story to sustain interest.Takeshi Kineshiro stars as Miyamoto, a mercenary who has an agenda against Yakuza boss Mizoguchi (Goro Kishitani).
As the hilariously laconic and irredeemably evil Mizoguchi, Goro Kishitani is fun to watch, his villainous performance evoking a mix of past work from Alan Rickman and Gary Oldman.Returner boasts numerous terrific action sequences, rousing gun battles that employ fluid camera-work and stylish slow motion.
Admittedly, the movie runs a bit long after all the action, but there's a nice post-climactic plot twist that should please most sci-fi fans.(Major spoiler warning) I gather that the filmmakers were assuming that once Miri returned to the future, she'd still have the same memories of the former timeline (a la Back to the Future, Frequency), thus enabling her to save Miyamoto.
Never saw something that refreshing since Fifth Element.Of course a lot of people are going to say it is a Matrix rip-off, that the script looks like Terminator or Independence Day, blah blah...
Milly (Anne Suzuki), a young woman from the Earth resistance, uses a time machine and returns to October, 2002, trying to avoid the beginning of alien invasion and the war.
"The Returner" is a good surprise: the story uses many elements of "The Matrix" (the shootings, the costume of Miyamoto), "Clockstoppers" (the apparatus that makes time stand quite still), "The Terminator" (the traveling back in time to save the human race) and even "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" (an alien that wants to return home).
True, some of the special effects resembled those in The Matrix, but they helped advance this movie instead of being a way to try to make the movie seem more "cool."The character of Mizoguchi, played by Goro Kishitani, resembled Gary Oldman's parts in a number of films including Fifth Element, The (1997) and Léon (1994).
The acting by Takeshi Kaneshiro as Miyamoto was good, but the standout of the movie was the cute-as-a-button Ann Suzuki as the  serious, fun, energetic, and rebellious Miri.The CG of aliens disguised as terran aircraft transforming into their true forms was impressive, resembling the work done in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001) and Independence Day (1996).
If, like me, you are easily impressed by explosions and have not yet seen 'Returner', you should stop reading and go watch it right now.'Returner' is little more than a stylish action movie.
It is, however, all about entertainment.The story is very cute with a happy ending, the actors do the job pretty good, and especially the villain.Special effects in Yamazaki films are some of the best I've ever seen and surpass Hollywood sci-fi movies easily.This is a must for all sci-fi lovers.I work in a DVD rental store, and ever since I brought this movie on DVD (Zone 3), my customers just love the movie, not to mention the DTS sound.Highly reccomended..
The movie rolls along at an acceptable clip, there are some neat action scenes, and the special effects are often pretty good for what must have been a limited budget.
Minor virtues: the lead actress was cute and looked like a live action anime character and the surprise ending would have been moving and clever in the service of a better movie, but all in all unless you're twelve years old I would probably avoid this one..
With the strong lead characters, and eye opening special effects and CG including a variation of the famous "Bullet Time", "Returner" is not a film you will be disappointed with..
Plot didn't offer anything special but it didn't disturb me like in Terminator 3.Movie is quite well shot and actors are cool even if their acting is a bit Japanese.
This might be due to the fact that they are exactly same kind that in thousand other sci-fi / action movie.Also it puzzles me how humans first of all managed to build a time machine - but maybe we don't want to get too much in to that..
I saw this movie with some mates the day after i saw it the first time and its clear that "Returner" deserves its place in my dvd-collection among classics like "The Matrix", "Equilibrium", "Aliens", "Terminator" and "Terminator 2" to name a few.
And yet, the whole thing is built from a poor script that lacks coherence, logic, and most of all, fails on every conceivable level.It's bad enough that there are so many awful movies out there nowadays, but you really hate to see a film like RETURNER, which has so much going for it, failing so badly.
The effects are poor but do the job - they look OK in isolation, the problem is they don't fit in with their surroundings.The cast are fairly average and none really stand out; they don't really have any screen presence although Suzuki (Milly) is quite fun in a relaxed way and Kaneshiro is kind of cool, but outside of these two the rest of the cast is pretty poor - Kishitani in particular is a bad villain and comes across as a clichéd Japanese triad type.
It's 90% fast-forward-inducing lameness and cheesy action-movie clichés (a LOT of close-range shooting that inexplicably doesn't hit the main character) and 10% incredibly AWESOME special effects.
In fact, it is entertaining to watch the movie if you really like spotting elements stolen from other films; I identified the Quick and the Dead, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and ET, among others..
Returner is one of those, however looks and style does not a good movie make.In the future humanity is waging war against an Alien species called "Daggra" by the humans.
Some of the action scenes have a bit of flash to them and the two main characters are enjoyable, especially Milly (Anne Suzuki), who's delightfully capable and resourceful for an early turn of the century action heroine.Still, the fact remains that Returner has perilously little to show for itself.
There are some similarities to the "Terminator" movie though."Returner" (aka "Ritânâ") is about Milly (played by Anne Suzuki) who is living in a war-torn future, the year is 2084 and aliens are waging war on mankind, and mankind is losing.
The dialogue is good and the characters are alive and colorful.The effects were good and passes as believable, although I was puzzled at how the driver and gunman disappeared from inside an exploding car as it came crashing down on the road.Fun and action-filled entertainment, "Returner" is well worth watching, regardless if you like Japanese movies or not..
Kishitani over acts entertainingly as the evil villain and is interesting to watch whenever he is on screen.The style and effects are excellent with some great set pieces and neat special effects running at a reasonable pace although hard edge of the seat stuff.The problem is that there is not a single original thought in this film.
The main plot is obviously taken from Terminator but that is only the start with bits from The Matrix, E.T. and Transformers being the most obvious inserts but there are other films used liberally.This is more a homage to American sci-fi films than a film in its own right and although the few humorous touches are well timed and delivered the film would have been better if it had been play more for laughs.Its watchable if you have nothing else to do but I certainly wouldn't seek it out..
Returner has excellent actors (Takeshi Kaneshiro, from House of Flying Daggers; Anne Suzuki, from Moon Child; Goro Kishitani, plays one of the best movie 'bad guys'; and Kirin Kiki the supplier (of weapons/information) with attitude) Returner has beautiful photography, flawless animation, and really cool action scenes.
I am going to quote a previous reviewer, mats_carcass, who put the problem with this film most succinctly:"Ingredients: 2 Parts E.T. 1 Part The Terminator 1 Part Indepedance Day Rind of The Matrix pretty much every action movie cliché" all true; and add as well an actress with a face that would look great in a manga cartoon and a popular young Chinese actor doing what popular young Chinese actors do in action films these days.Yet while I respect the perceptions of the reviewer I quote, I must disagree as to the entertainment value of the film; I liked the characters enough that I found their story entertaining, and the pacing was good, with a enough plot twists to allow me to ignore the derivative nature of the whole project.
If it moves as well as the films it imitates, then I don't mind wasting a little time with it.I also warn the viewer not to turn the movie off at the point the main plot seems resolved.
He's a great actor who can pull off playing a villain as well as a hero.Special effects aren't extraordinary but well done and they blend in well with the scenes.Overall an enjoyable movie that I wouldn't mind re-watching.
RETURNER is a film that goes for quantity over quality, delivering a quite frankly bonkers plot that riffs on such movies as THE MATRIX (in the look, style and action), THE TERMINATOR (with the main character having travelled from the future to save the present) and STAR WARS (dodgy looking aliens are the enemy in this instance).
This is definitely worth seeing if you're into Japanese action/sci-fi films, there are a lot of cool CGI moments and some pretty slick fighting/gun-play as well.
One of the main drawbacks is that the overall style of Returner almost feels like a culminated homage to many of America's popular action/sci-fi films (there are scenes in here that almost seem to be pulled right out of The Matrix, Mission Impossible 2, etc.) and at times, this factor comes off as kinda "hokey" and leaves you unimpressed due to a lack of originality.
But, with the subject of "original style" aside, it does carry a pretty entertaining storyline and even completes with a cool shock ending.(Note: I rented it on DVD and personally decided that it was way more fitting to view it in Japanese with the English subtitles on because the English voice-over track was just a little too annoying and badly timed in spots.).
Now in 2002 she teams up with Miyamoto (Takeshi Kaneshiro), vigilante to help in her mission.This kinetic cross between Independence Day, The Terminator and The Matrix plays like a live-action anime film.
I like the appearances, voices, and presentation of the main actors: Milly, Miyamoto, the Chinese Lady, and the gray-haired bad guy (the one Miyamoto was determined to kill).Yes, I noticed a few points in the plot that I had seen in other movies.
The script also lacked some depth for each of the lead characters, the idea of the movie could actually have been a lot better.To sum it all up a tad, a quite enjoyable and driven movie that lives on some good action scenes and one of the coolest bad guys I've seen in a very long time.
Let's give a quick rundown: people were using P-90s and Harriers 80 years in the future; the Fallacy of the Talking Killer reared its ugly head more than once; the authorities' response (or lack of response) to the events in this movie shatters the boundaries of reality; homage or not, seeing ET in a serious action movie was kinda jarring; and a certain scene toward the end of the film will give you tooth cavities.Now that we've gotten the major faults out of the way...All the people who were calling this movie a Terminator rip-off missed the point, the point being, namely, that "this is what Terminator 3 should have been like!" The reason T2 is the best action movie ever made isn't because it had great action, but because by the time it ended, you felt that the characters were real people, and that you had been on a long and perilous journey with them, you felt their inner and outer struggles like they were your own.
It is one of the best movies I have seen in a long time (other than Lord of the Rings.)Because the world is being destroyed by aliens, a young girl (Milly) is sent back to try and kill whoever or whatever started the war.
It was a kind of "mad hatter" in places, but I found the cross references between the terminator, e.t., the matrix and "yakuza bad guys with some crazy kung fu" highly entertaining.In particular I liked the special effects, the time travel, the aliens in their fight suits, the boeing airplane which turns out to be a disguised alien mothership and the cameradery that eventually occurs between the main two hero characters.Anne Suzuki really shined on in "Snow Falling of Cedars" and this film was a result of me seeing that film and wanting to see more of her work.
A sci fi movie with a good plot, good action, a great mix of stuff in this film.
this was my first time seeing takeshi kaneshiro in a movie as the lead actor, but i had heard of him before, i will check out more of his films because of this.
What this film does have over other sci-fi efforts last year is lots of high-octane action, plucky acting and style in abundance.The production crew certainly made excellent use of the tools they had available, as I mentioned before the bullet-time in Returner is not as impressive as the Matrix films but the sight of Miyamoto in his long trenchcoat dodging bullets then launching into some all out kung fu action is just as good as anything Keanu ever did.
I can highly recommend this to everyone who likes good action movies, who can overlook plot holes and a rather cheap story (Though it's laid out extremely nice, especially at the end).9/10.
What is good about Japanese anime is good about "The Returner."  It is hardcore, sci-fi action peppered with style and just enough substance.I admit I was slightly surprised after renting this movie at my local video store...
Many scenes where our hero was chatting, walking, etc., had some great dirty, rough, textured places which gave the movie a signature of interesting style.The characters are driven as you might expect in an action film.
The hero (Takeshi Kaneshiro) was handsome and the heroine (Anne Suzuki) was cute, and they both had a good raptor  together, although not in a sexual way like you would expect from an American movie.
I have to say this - the scene where Millie tosses a mug of water into the air, freezes time and catches the falling water in the mug is still one of the most impressive special effects I've ever seen in my life.In the end, if you want an action/sci-fi movie that's mainstream, but offbeat enough to keep a unique identity, then go with "Returner".
I think that "Returner" is one of the best Japanese action movie i ever seen.
Why can't people just take time and relax over a simple too good action movie like Returner..
The western actors in this movie are just horrible and some CGI looks a bit cheesy (but nothing as cheesy as the awful looking Burly Brawl scene in Matrix Reloaded), but the movie is still very well made and most of the time it really looks like a big budget movie.Takeshi Kaneshiro is cool (didn't really surprise me), the main villain of the movie is fantastic (reminds me of Gary Oldman in Leon) and Ms. Suzuki is quite good too.
I  liked Returner, it's not the best film I've seen but it's definately an o.k. movie, the three main characters I think were thought out pretty well and the special effects were damn cool..
The action revisits the feel of 'The Matrix' (It's certainly no coincidence that Miyamoto is wearing a long leather trench coat and looks like a Japanese Keanu Reeves with a bleach job) and a fun technological plot device justifies the use of bullet-time camera effects.
However, I was genuinely surprised when I really liked the movie.Takeshi Kaneshiro is definitely very good as the gun slinging Miyamoto but Anne Suzuki as Milly was more than a match in talent.
*END BIG SPOILER* People say that it takes from a lot of other American action films but I saw this as more of a homage than anything.The only warning is, if you watching it in English the first time, watch it again in Japanese (with subtitles if you want).
It does rip a lot off elements from The Matrix, Terminator and other various action movies but who cares?!