Monday 4 August 2014

Versus (2000)

[My fifth Blaugust post!]

This Japanese action film is a bit of a mix mash in its content AND its story telling. Starting out by following two escaped prisoners to their getaway group sounds like an interesting enough setup. Until I mention that the same getaway group has brought a kidnapped girl with them, and the forest they are meeting up in is spawning zombies (armed with firearms no less), and the big bad guy uses swords, guns and magic. By the time the two comedic policemen come looking, one with a still bleeding decapitated hand, you might have forgotten that there were escaped convicts to begin with.

It's also like the director was trying to make a manga in some shots where you have all the actors standing in somewhat un-natural positions, not looking at each other while they talk (sometimes for an entire dialogue) but they are all visible and posed for the camera.

Plot aside, the comedy and the acting is a bit hit and miss but at least the action and violence makes up for a fair bit of that. It's pretty aptly named too since everything else is just a big wrapper of fluff around the good guy vs the bad guy. 

One can never have enough weapons!

Definitely not one to be taken seriously, but if you enjoy a bit of brawling, wire work, gun and sword play and can endure Japanese humor (and a little gore) then you might actually enjoy this one! I give it two and a half bullets out of five.

Blaugust Bonus: I began enjoying foreign films after I got into anime, which led me to getting used to the whole subtitle thing. As a strange bonus, I've watched so many Japanese ones that I can sometimes tell when the subtitles have a wrong translation for some of the words - despite me not being able to speak Japanese in the first place.

No comments:

Post a Comment