No matter hundreds of previous air travel experiences, the miracle is that this overloaded cylinder of a bird gains speed to uplift and maintain itself, finally descending softly and in one piece at yet-unseen point B. Writing now at a ridiculous altitude of 35,000 feet is truly surreal, an improbable voyage between sky and water, heaven and hell, the New World and the Old. No less surreal, come to think of it, than the trip between still another two worlds – Orient and Occident – as in Japanese Katsuhito Ishii’s 1998 feature début, Shark Skin Man and Peach Hip Girl, scheduled for its New York premiere this April.

Although originating from a Japanese comic book series, Ishii’s script shows the greater influence of American comics and cinema. Advance blurbs to the contrary, it does not resemble the now nearly formalized anime mode. Instead, it’s a colorful hip updating of the two-on-the-lam motif popular since the 'thirties, adding tributary dashes of cine noir out of Breathless and, most obviously and elegantly, touches of Pulp Fiction’s dark humor, even to bathroom scenes and car conversations.

Unlike the earlier Tarantino-Roger Avary take, aside from a brief mention there are no drugs, and though blood runs aplenty, the customary gory violence is actually minimal. Further, there is no nudity, only designer underwear and bras. The camera pans are relatively slow, the eclectic music blaring (even to Oriental country and western end credits), the sharp cuts insistent and, surprisingly, the story and characters quite captivating.

The opening scene is clear enough – though confusing in relation to the two-year flash forward that is the body of the film – but, even this problem is clarified in the final closing of the "frame." In between, as one pieces together what is what and who is who, there is a limited but finely tuned gallery of good guys and rogues, quirks and gimmicks. Handle-less knives are featured, along with sword-baseball bats, outsize guns, snapping fingers and creaking jackets, chairs and backbones; pistol silencers that double as gear shifts, cigarette lighters twirled like six-shooters and walkie-talkies mistaken for lighters. Also added to the mix are three dimwitted thugs who reprise Moe, Curly and Larry, a "high-tech" hired assassin prone to nosebleeds who winds up liking his target too much to kill him, a dyed blond dandy of a killer who can sniff out his prey and hates water, and a befurred mob-moll who converses silently with cigarettes. This is all topped off with the crazy clothing, purportedly designer originals called "hyper fashion" but looking like hippie thrift-shop finds.

In kinetic story and style deriving from the director’s background in short-attention-span TV commercials, schoolgirl Toshiko Momojiri (Sie Kohinata) – the "Peach Hip" remains a mystery, perhaps lost in subtitle translation – runs away from the Hotel Symphony manager, her repressed, repressive uncle (Youhachi Shimada). But she accidentally crashes into a carload of ineffective professional hit men pursuing the underwear-clad Kuroo Samehada (Todanobu Asano), who is running from an occasional, paid ménage à trois with a hundred million yen stolen from the Yakuza.

Grateful for his inadvertent rescue, the young man is respectful, kind and encouraging, as the nicely matched pair begins a comically bizarre flight from the gangsters as well as the money-strapped Yamada (Tatsuya Gashiun), hired by the uncle to return the girl to him for marriage. The two fugitives are friends, not partners in lust: along the way, Samehada steals a 1981 Corvette Stingray and smiles shyly, as she emerges from her chrysalis of prim, little-girlish dress and Buddy Holly eyeglasses. There is a beating ahead, shoot-outs, knife wounds, bleeding and an ambiguous end (or not) for the hero – at the screening, opinion was divided – but the innocent charm of the two leads, the campiness of the others, the frantic improbable conception and pacing, combine in a winning film.

Intentionally or not, Shark Skin Man is sweeter, because less calculatedly shocking, than its numerous American cousins like Bonnie and Clyde or True Romance or even (for me) the same-sex Thelma & Louise. Coming prepared to dislike another The Getaway and more air-swishing martial arts division, I left satisfied with 108 minutes of unthinking fun.

(Released by Rapid Eye Movies; not rated by MPAA.)