Movie review - Baby Assassins: Nice Days

Baby Assassins: Nice Days *** (out of 5) Although this is the third installment of what’s become an action comedy franchise, it’s not really necessary to have seen the first two to enjoy this one. The eponymous assassins aren’t literal babies, of course. They’re a pair of late teen – early 20s Japanese lasses who act as girlish and giggly as standard anime co-eds between their contract killings… and sometimes even during. Akari Takaishi again plays pretty, feminine brunette Chisato to Saori Izawas’s blond-shagged tomboy Mahiro. They are again as charming as in the first feature, and moreso than they were in the sequel, Baby Assasssins 2. That one was out of balance, with too much silly and too little shooting and slugging.

The plot – for those who care about such things - begins with our duo hired to whack a guy on assignment from their assassin’s guild. But when they try, a rival freelancer, Kaede (Sosuke Ikematsu) shows up with the same goal and comparable skills. As the three fight over the kill, the target escapes. For the rest of the film, our pair with a few allies tries to finish the job, and also eliminate Kaede, who continues to compete for the scalp. Kaede’s interference makes the association lose face, and cannot be tolerated.

There’s relatively little down time between action sequences in this fast-paced romp. The fight scenes are quite exciting, with a significant uptick in quality and quantity from the first two. Izawa’s resume includes far more stunt gigs than acting, and she deploys that experience to great advantage. This one is more her film than Takaishi’s, especially due to a couple of long intense fight sequences. She truly takes a licking and keeps on ticking. Yugo Sakamoto, who wrote and directed all three, upped his game significantly from their last installment. His new stunt coordinators outperformed their predecessors in choreographing more elaborate and graphic gun fu scenes, yielding a higher body count.

Among the newcomers, Ikematsu gets to flesh out a character more complex and nuanced than the genre’s typical foe role. Iruka Minami (Atsuko Maeda) also delivers a solid turn as the prickly overseer who eventually shows other sides to her personality.

It's not a spoiler to write that the titular pair survive this 2024 adventure, since they’ve already followed it with a 12-episode TV series, Baby Walkure Everyday! Sakamoto wrote all of those and directed seven. They must be a huge hit in Japan to run such a long string. I hope our domestic home-market providers will continue importing whatever these lasses keep on doing.

(Baby Assassins: Nice Days, in Japanese with subtitles and a smattering of English, debuts on Digital and Blu-ray on 8/26/25 from Well Go USA)