iyamoto (Kaneshiro) is a man who lives by darkness. As a "Returner" he's hired to infiltrate black-market transactions and swipe cash from them using his wits and skills with a gun. But one fateful night his life in the shadows is changed forever.
In the midst of breaking up and stealing from a sale involving trafficked children, Miyamoto discovers that the gangster behind the deal, Mizoguchi (Kishitani), is the same man who abducted his best friend from childhood, whom he swore to avenge. But vengeance eludes the Returner when
Mizoguchi escapes after Miyamoto accidentally shoots a girl during their battle.
Miyamoto decides to take in the wounded girl, who wakes up telling some impossible tales. This girl, Milly (Suzuki), claims to be from the future, having traveled back in time in order to prevent an incident that eventually leads to the destruction of mankind. Milly quickly decides
she wants to enlist the Returner's help, and she doesn't care if he believes her story or not—because she's planted a miniature bomb on his neck that can't be tampered with but can be detonated by her at any time.
Reluctantly—to say the least—the Returner agrees to help the spirited but strange girl, who leads him to the National Institute of Space Science. It's there, she claims, that an alien being and its crash-landed spaceship are being held. It's this extraterrestrial that's responsible for the invasion of and war on Earth, Milly explains, and they have to kill it before it's too late.
But they aren't the only ones who know about the alien's presence. Mizoguchi, who works for a Chinese Triad that has spies within the Institute, has also learned of the creature and its craft, his masters having directed him—with the aid of their private militia—to find a way to exploit the technology the alien has. And so Milly and Miyamoto find themselves up against not only time and an alien but a ruthless psycho killer in their mission to save the future.
Derivative, but borrowing from the best
One of the fascinating things about movies today is the various artistic and cultural feedback loops some of them are a part of. In Returner, for instance, viewers might see action and aesthetics highly reminiscent of The Matrix—which is itself influenced by Asian action films, many of which have been influenced by American action movies and westerns, a number of which have been inspired by things like samurai epics ... etc. And then there are the media loops of manga (an art form originally and still conversational both with the West and with cinema) and even contemporary video games (developed in both East and West and becoming more cinematic every day) that Returner joins in as well.
A less generous way of thinking about this is to see Returner as a highly derivative movie. It's not just The Matrix, manga and Metal Gear Solid that this film narratively and visually borrows from—echoes of the likes of The Terminator, The
Professional and E.T. show up at various times and in various ways. Returner is a movie looking to be a—time travel and alien invasion—science fiction story, a gangland revenge drama, a militaristic thriller and a buddy-romance pic all at once. And like a number of other recent genre jambalayas—like Dreamcatcher and Koi ... Mil Gaya—Returner doesn't quite pull off its fusion as well as it should in order to consistently make real sense.
What's good about Returner, though, is very good. There's some good special effects and some top-rate action sequences, a number of which are aided by a neat take on "bullet time"—a device Milly brings with her from the future that allows her to move at 20 times her normal rate. On the whole, the film has a sharp, dramatic and cool visual style. There are also some highly entertaining performances. Kaneshiro and Suzuki make an appealing pair and are individually fun to watch, and Kishitani plays his crazy, badass bad guy with real force and dynamic melodrama. This story may take its characters all over the map, but at least they make the trip convincingly.
