Wasabi



Wasabi (2001) is a French film that tries to prove that the French film industry can produce an action-comedy just a dumb as any from Hollywood, and it succeeds admirably. The plot is laughable, the characters are all shallow stereotypes, and the attempts at emotional moments cringe-worthy. The only thing Wasabi has to recommend it is the star turn by Jean Reno. He’s playing the kind bad-ass, emotionally-hobbled veteran cop role he can do in his sleep, but I still liked him in this film.


"There's the guy who invented Dance Dance Revolution!"

Reno is Hubert, a cop so mean that while apprehending a transvestite suspect at a nightclub he punches out the police chief’s teenaged son for no reason. Hubert is placed on leave for two months, which is convenient, because Hubert gets a call telling him that the love of his life, a Japanese intelligence agent named Miki, has died and left him everything. Hubert knew Miki 20 years earlier, when he was with French Intelligence in Japan, but he hasn’t seen Miki in 19 years because she just disappeared one day. Hubert flies to Japan to pay his respects and collect the inheritance.

In Japan Hubert receives the inheritance, which is a box of trinkets and a 19-year old daughter he didn’t know he had, Yumi (Ryoko Hirosue). Yumi is so relentlessly hyper I came to suspect her blood had been replaced with Jolt Cola, and just watching her constant antics can be tiring. Hubert discovers that Yumi has $200,000,000 in her bank account she doesn’t know about, and that Miki may have been murdered.


A tough guy... named 'Hubert'?

I don’t think you have to have seen too many action movies to see exactly where this is going. Miki disappeared because she went undercover in the Yakuza, and Miki stole the money and was murdered. The Yakuza, naturally, want the money back, so it’s up to Hubert to keep Yumi alive in the face of numerous attacks by thugs in matching black suits. (Incidentally, that’s a Western convention, to portray the Yakuza that way. In Japanese movies the Yakuza always dress very casually, like they’re perpetually on the way to the golf course.) And do I really have to tell you that the box of trinkets contains clues for Hubert to follow?

There are many things about this movie that are deeply, deeply stupid. Of course the whole movie wouldn’t need to happen if Hubert would just go to the police, but he doesn’t. I’m also not quite sure if I understand the ethics behind Miki’s decision to steal $200 million from the Yakuza and give it to her daughter. Nobody, including Hubert or any other law enforcement types, seems to have the slightest qualms with Yumi keeping the money. If I had been paying protection to the Yakuza I’d be pretty pissed if I found out some undercover cop stole millions of dollars and used it to enrich an over-caffeinated mallrat. Hubert has an ex-Partner in Japan in the person of Momo (Michel Muller), who provides huge amounts of odious comic relief. Oh, and while I’m on the subject of Momo and Hubert, how come if they are intelligence agents with years of experience in Japan neither of them speaks a word of Japanese? They don’t even understand the simplest sentences. And Momo has been in Japan for 20+ years!


Right now, I think Jean Reno is thinking about the same thing...

On the plus side is Jean Reno, and there is a funny sequence where Hubert takes Yumi shopping for clothes in a department store and discreetly beats up thugs that are following her. Beyond that the action scenes are all pretty tired, and the climatic showdown is anything but. Wasabi is also so desperate to go out on a laugh that it ends with a gag that makes absolutely no sense and is more likely to leave the audience going, ”Huh?”

Posted: Mon - August 9, 2004 at      

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