Returner

Returner (リターナー, 2002) is a Japanese sci-fi action film you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Takashi Yamazaki and starring Takeshi Kaneshiro and Anne Suzuki. It was a major summer release for Toho, the studio behind Godzilla.

The year is 2084, and humanity is losing. A young soldier named Miri slips back through time to 2002 with one objective: find the moment that started the alien war and stop it before it happens. To do that, she needs Miyahara — a Shanghai-based contract shooter with his own unfinished business and a grudge against a powerful crime boss that has nothing to do with saving the world.

Yamazaki built the film around bullet-time action sequences and the kinetic energy of late-90s Hong Kong cinema, and the DNA of The Matrix and Terminator is visible — though the story is its own. The pairing of a cold professional and a desperate girl from the future drives it more than the effects do. Stream Returner online on iFILM.