There has been a flood of Japanese horror and science fiction titles hitting the US video stores nowadays ever since Ring accompanied it's remake. It seems Japanese Science Fiction has been gaining a folowing recently. One of the genre's titles, The Returner, seemed to demonstrate that the US does not have the monopoly on the Sci-Fi genre and shows that Japan too can make good action/fantsy flicks.

The story The Returner is that in the future, aliens have invaded Earth and mankind is on the verge of extinction. A handfull of resistance fighters struggle in a remote location. Unfortunatley, the aliens find them and annihilate them, save for one survivor named Millie, who uses a Time Machine to travel to the past to find the cause of alien invasion. Enter Miyamoto, a gun-for-hire in present time Tokyo. The two meet while Miyamoto was on shooting-fest with a few gangsters and Millie got in the middle of it. After caring for Millie, Miyamoto was hired by her to look for the source of the upcoming alien conflict. Miyamoto was less than willing to accept the job. From then on, the two go off on a thrill ride of action and adventure as they face local thugs who get in the way of their quest.

My thoughts, the movie itself is good, but it kinda lacked in the originality department. It's a mesh of already used sci-fi formulas and it kinda blends them well, but not seamless. The characters are somewhat memorable, but the villain is just another typical thug with no depth whatsoever. They didn't expand too much on the alien invasion as much as I would have hoped, it only serves as a backdrop and they are only shown in short snippets along the movie. Though the action was pretty good but again, this is something I've seen before. Hell, remove the alien invasion backdrop and you would still have a pretty good action shooter flick.

I would recommend this movie to action fans, but science fiction fans who would expect more would probably be bored by this. Nevertheless, look into it and see for yourself if you would like it. I like it enough.