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A while back I re-posted old reviews I did on the board for Azn flicks that I enjoyed. Unfortunately, all the posts in the Foreign section were mistakenly deleted at one point during some routine maintenance. I thought I'd post the old reviews I did once again (courtesy of waybackmachine), which may prove useful for people who may not've seen these flicks. Enjoy
Original Thread Posted On 12-23-2003, 04:31 AM: http://replay.web.archive.org/200408...d.php?p=121504
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Well, after waiting and reading mostly positive reviews on this film I finally got to check it myself and I have to say that it's one of the best samurai films I've ever seen. Its got a lot of sweet action and cool scenes and characters. A lot of instances it reminded me of anime, because of what was going on, and me being a fan of anime I was pleasantly surprised. This is another movie by Versus director Ryuhei Kitamura, who is obviously a big fan of samurai action, because a lot of his films seem to have samurai influence in'em. The man sure loves his action and badass characters. I also noticed he loves his actors, because there were a couple familiar faces in here, but I'll get to that later. Also if you're wondering if there's good ninja-versus-samurai action in here and I'm proud to say there is, but it's limited. Though, there is a lot of samurai-versus-samurai and samurai-versus-crazy-assed-guys-with-swords.
The movie is based on a manga by Yu Koyama that has been running since '94 and sold over 8 million copies on paperback. The story follows our main character Azumi and her buddies, whom are all assassins -- trained since they were very young. Azumi and her fellow assassins (along with their master) set on a mission to rid the world of evil men. They are first appointed a task be a ninja-friend that goes by the name of Nagato, who just so happens to be played by Hideo Sakaki (Villain in Versus and hero in Alive). The task calls for them to kill two men who they believe are trying to start a war. I don't wanna spoil it too much, but lets just say that their mission isn't exactly successful and they end up getting other samurai and warriors after them.
This movie is filled with a lot of excellent samurai action and that surprised me considering the movie is a little over 2-hours, but not once was I ever bored and that's very rare with films exceeding 2 hours. Since I mentioned the bad guy from Versus being in this movie as a ninja, the hero from Versus also plays a crazy warrior who attempts to hunt down the group of assassins. Man, director Ryuhei Kitamura must really like those guys. Anyway, like I said there's a lot of action, but a complaint about that is the fact that some of the young assassins and sometimes even Azumi don't look very convincing when wielding their swords in battle. At times it seemed like they were just moving a little too slow and that hurt the film slightly, but if you don't pay attention to little details like that then you'll really enjoy the flick.
I actually expected a good amount of gore in this film since usually when swords are used in action flicks you see a lot of limbs or heads being cut off, but not the case in this film. No, we mainly just see a lot of cuts and gashes with its occasional blood spurting out. Sure, it's a bloody film, but it's not really big on the gore-factor, but that's not a bad thing, it just would've made it more fun to watch in my opinion.
What really makes this movie entertaining, aside from the action, is the cool characters. We've got our badass heroine, who really get to see kick a lot of ass and show off her skills -- fending off against hundreds of foes at a time. We've also got our other assassins who have their own unique style and talents, although they aren't really explored much, because the camera doesn't want to shy too far away from Azumi, which I thought was another slight letdown, because I would have liked to see more exploration in terms of fighting skills with the other guys. We've also got the determined samurai master who trained the group, but sadly we don't get to see him show off his skills until towards the end.
Also there are the interesting baddies -- we've got a weird skilled ninja, who wears an odd suit that everyone claims makes him look like a monkey, although his "skill" was aimed more towards a canine. Also a couple hired brother warriors (one played by the hero from Versus) who are slow, but strong. Then we are introduced to the main baddy, who is dressed all in white and has very quick skills with the sword. He's a definitely an odd one.
All-in-all this is a very entertaining flick. It has some cool CGI sequences now and then, but doesn't overload with the stuff, which is good and keeps things simple and faithful to older samurai flicks. There are badass characters and a simple and familiar story to us fans of anime. I definitely recommend this baby to all you samurai-movie fans or action fans in general. 8/10 (changed from a 9/10) -- this is going on my list of fav films.
More info...
http://imdb.com/title/tt0384819/