Chuyển đến nội dung chính

Versus (II) (2000) review

Boy, oh, boy. They don't make them like this anymore and boy, do I wish I had written this flick. This is a movie living and breathing (so to speak) cult following. "Versus" is a thrilling, fast and furious action-horror-comedy-martial arts actioner directed by Ryuhei Kitamara and features a bizarre and original plot line that's virtually nonexistent.

The irony is, even though it's original, the film spends very little time explaining its more complicated bits and gets great mileage out of the Japanese actors, none of whom have real names, other than two or three-word descriptions like the grungy, tough-talking anti-hero "Prisoner KSC2-303" or "The Girl" or "Yakuza Leader with Butterfly Knife." Real deep characters, huh?


The plot is simple, if confusing, and all seven minutes of it occur within the first few scenes: In Japan's "Forest of Resurrection," two escaped convicts are on their way to making a rendezvous with a group of fellow gangsters. A shoot-out occurs over a disagreement between KSC2 and the Yakuza leader regarding a kidnapped young woman in the trunk of his car - The Girl; one of the men is killed, and so is KSC2's buddy.

KSC2 and The Girl run off into the forest, but after he, and each of the gangsters put 50 bullets into the reanimated corpses of KSC2's buddy and the dead gangster. Soon, KSC2, The Girl, and the gangsters realize something is not right about the woods they had set up as a prearranged meeting spot, and it isn't long before they're all emptying clip after clip into the zombified corpses rising up from their shallow graves in the forest floor. (On a side note, I don't think any of the gangsters ever run out of ammunition.)

As it would turn out, the gangsters have been using the forest as a burial ground for their victims, and they're coming back to settle a score with their killers. Since this is the Forest of Resurrection, all the bodies of slain gangsters are rising from the dead and fighting against their living enemies. That's about all there is to the plot, and all you need to know.

This is a strange gem right here, folks. I don't think there's single production in Hollywood that could touch this movie in terms of style and subject matter. It looks fantastic, really giving the woods a life of its own (so to speak), and the mood of the film is effectively surreal. (It kind of reminds me of "The Evil Dead" in a few ways.) "Versus" ultimately plays out like a collision between every low-budget zombie movie, John Woo shoot-'em-up picture, and action movie we've ever seen. Now in Hollywood, ladies and gentlemen, we call that originality.

"Versus" is a skillful blend of each genre and it never loses sight of the main conflict between escaped convicts and gangsters; the zombies are merely a nuisance - who at first appear to be an interference with shadowy gangland activities. But as it would turn out, however, there's more to the story, and the Forest of Resurrection, as well as the zombies somehow figure into a plot that's best explained by the main villain of the picture, a stranger who I presume is The Man (since as I said before none of the characters have real names), who seeks The Girl to use her in his quest to achieve immortality, or something like that.

It's also pretty funny too. Much of the comedy in this movie arises from one panicky gangster member and two horribly disfigured police officers (whom I'm not sure are dead and resurrected or just badly injured) who have vowed to bring down the escaped convicts. And the corny one-liners (ever-present in the American dubbed version) will definitely get you laughing at its attempts to sound cool to our braindead audiences.

Even though "Verses" is not rated, it's extremely bloody with enough over-the-top gore to please any American gorehound or fan of zombie pictures. It's also got enough martial arts action and Woo-style gunplay to satisfy anyone who's gone into the film thinking this is a samurai picture (from looking at the DVD cover art).

"Versus" will definitely win on the cult circuit; whether it's ready to take on the American mainstream is a question that only time will answer. We'll just have to wait and see who the winner of that titanic battle will be...

See more:



Nhận xét

Bài đăng phổ biến từ blog này

Star Trek: Beyond (2016) review

123movies free - After the noisy and irretrievably stupid (though reasonably entertaining) Into Darkness, I wasn't desperate to watch this one, but when I finally did I was relieved to discover that it was even more enjoyable than the first film in the reboot, a rollicking adventure with terrific alien weapons, fun McCoy/Spock repartee, a promising newcomer alien, and a lot of really excellent action scenes. The movie had almost all the qualities of the original series except one - the thinking part. The smartest thing in the movie is the funny opening scene, which suggests the difficulty of communication between different cultures. But that's the last thing in the movie that suggests even a moment of thought. The main villain has very little in the way of motivation, and when he explains his purpose it's quite disappointing. Nothing in this movie is there to provoke thought, and I'm not entirely convinced that anything in the movie really makes sense, although the...

Spider-Man (2002) review

  zmovie  - Studios lately have been known to spend almost $200 million dollars bringing a comic book super hero to life on the silver screen. With $200 million dollars you can buy many state of the art special effects for the director to full around with to his hearts content. If in the process, though, he decides to fore-go an entertaining story and script, characters that we can get to know and sympathize with, and good actors to bring those characters to life, all the special effects in the world isn't going to amount to a hill of beans. Fortunately for us, in bringing Marvel Comic's Spiderman to life, Sam Raimi did care about those little details and the audience is richly rewarded because of it. One of the trickier tasks when transferring a film such as Spiderman to film is in giving us enough background story. If a writer and director spend too much time on the origins of the character, it has a tendency to bog the rest of the film down. Likewise, if it is given short...

The Dark Tower (2017) review

I've been reading these books for over two decades now. I was really pumped about the movie. I saw the very first showing, and I can say that the negative reviews coming out about this film are unwarranted. First, you have to keep in mind what they were hoping to achieve with this movie given the budget. It's a similar play to that of the first Hunger Games movie. If they get some traction with this one, then the subsequent movies/TV series get twice the money to work with. I personally think that they did a fantastic job with this first effort. The acting was solid. The story was actually pretty good. It had some great actions sequences, and the CGI was surprisingly good (most of the time). It was also a very efficient use of time. Every scene helped explain the Dark Tower lore to new audiences. It was a fun action flick that doesn't try to repeat the experience of reading the books. I'll always have the novels. I wasn't expecting this movie to recreate that ...