Review: The back cover say, "In the tradition of Reservoir Dogs", but rip-off would be more appropriated. Score borrow, sorry, I mean steal a lot of his main ideas from other classic action movies. But let make this clear, what is the difference between rip-off and homage, well maybe you won't agree with me but I would say that an homage is when a movie have his own original idea and take an idea from someone else to make his original idea even more interesting, but a rip off is when the main original idea of the movie is something that it took from another movie and without this idea the movie would not have any substance at all. That is the reason in my opinion why Score falls in the categories of rip-off, there's nothing original in this whole movie.

I can't say that much about the story except that is was just a pretext to get some great action scenes. Don't try to find a solid story here because you might be disappointed, very cliché, simple with no real punch in it. The story was very poor quality and doesn't have a lot of surprises to offer. But I don't think that the filmmakers wanted to impress or surprise people with the story anyway, this movie is just action scenes with a very simple story running in background. Since a lot of elements and main ideas in the story come from other movies, I can't say that there's a lot of originality in it, and it was sometimes a little annoying to watch ideas, taken from someone else, completely wasted in a movie like this. A better script and a little more of originality would have not hurt the movie at all, that's for sure.

The movie doesn't really take the time to present us the characters. Most of the time we follow Chance, the mullet guy, interacting with his other band members or they are all firing or yelling at each others. They also all wear the same outfit, a la Reservoir Dog, and even their personality were not very interesting. Character design is something that is usually very interesting to watch in Japanese movies, but Score doesn't succeed to impress on that side. Maybe if each of the four main characters would have had their own special ability and a more unique personality, it would have made them a little more interesting. As for the acting itself, you can qualify it of B-movie cheesy standard and not convincing at all. Bit this is not a drama but a damn action movie. The only character which I found the acting that varied over the other actors was the character of TJ the highway robber, played by Kazuyoshi Ozawa, he was the only character which I had some pity for him, but it was a little too late for his good acting to save the movie from being categorize as B-level acting.

So far I only said bad things about this movie, so you are probably wondering if there's anything interesting in this garbage, well I would say yes, but not for everyone's taste. This is an action movie with a lot of action and most of it consisting of guns fights. The only interesting thing that I found in the movie, and something that I really think that the filmmaker should have exaggerated even more, is the fact that you won't believe how many gun shells these guys can take before dying. There's a lot of gun fights spread during the whole movie, but the fact that these guys can take point blank gun shot and get back on their feet right away won't please everyone, but I really liked this idea and at least it gives some originality to these action scenes. But again the originality stops there, because again, there's a lot of camera tricks and fights scenes that borrow elements and sometime exact ideas from other films. At least the action was very entertaining, fun to watch and well filmed but I was waiting for something a little more spectacular on the action side, since it is the only thing that the movie really has to offer.

This project was the first directing film of Atsushi Muroga, who also directed Junk a few years after. We can easily spot his influence but I really think that he should try to find his own main ideas instead of basing them on other people ideas and then maybe his movies will have some real impact in Japanese cinema. Score is not a complete waste of time, it still has some great thing to offer to those of you who like B-movie action cinema, but don't look for too much in this movie. If you can pass over the bad acting, poor character design, bad story and a lot of rip off elements, then you might enjoy the fun action ride which is Score.