Enju is a wild and goofy good time

Enju will not surprise at any turn. It isn't particularly new, and you can pretty much lay out the beats in the first twenty minutes. But it's also expertly choreographed and packs a charming cast alongside the superlative Alice Hirose, who lights up the screen as a furiously entertaining action star.

The setting follows the familiar formula: "Die Hard on a...". Here, it's a remote camp for teenagers, where a group of demented villains take the camp hostage and attack the unsuspecting youths in a brutal onslaught that brings to mind the vicious bloodletting of Battle Royale.

That is, until they encounter a quiet teacher's assistant (Hirose), who turns out to be a deadly assassin in disguise. With her friends in danger, she drops the act and turns the tables on the intruders in a dizzying frenzy of violence.

The camp grounds are a sprawling maze of woods, lakes, and hideouts, which give the film a natural rhythm for encounters and set pieces. Most of the time, you can guess what kind of a scene is ahead just by looking at the surroundings, and that's not a knock on the material. Enju celebrates its origins, and part of that is teasing the audience with a good time. The anticipation is a feature all its own. It's a lot of fun to pick up potential shooting ranges and weapons, both intended and accidental, just by looking at the smart set design, and then have all of them come into play moments later.

The story is light, and Enju isn't a film where the plot matters that much. It isn't perfunctory, either, but just as serviceable as this type of film requires. Based on Ryohei Tsukimura's novel, Enju will probably work better for those familiar with the characters, as they remain vague cyphers for the most part – fun, larger-than-life cyphers, but still ethereal. Happily, the entire cast is here to play without a bad performance in sight. The villains, in particular, are deliciously evil, which is necessary for a film like this to work.

It runs a little long, as director Shigeaki Kubo (of the High & Low franchise) spends a bit too much time enamored with his wacky cast. These films work best when they're lean and mean, and Enju notably slows down about halfway through before it ramps up to a hyperactive finale.

But it is hard to complain when most of the film is this much fun. Enju has a great eye for action, and it puts other major Western action pics of the past couple of years to shame. A stunning piece of run-and-gun mayhem towards the end, where Kubo slows the world down so we can appreciate every frame of the meticulous stuntwork and pyrotechnics, is more fun than any of the past three John Wick films combined.

Anchored by the hugely charismatic Hirose, whose gently humorous performance knows exactly what kind of movie this is, Enju is a good time for action fans, even if it doesn't reinvent a single thing in the process.