Despite this film's near-total lack of acting, dialogue, and a plot, it remains one of the most compulsively watchable I've seen. Is it the zombies? The thugs? The zombie thugs? All I can say is that I've seen this movie more times than I'm willing to admit, and will be seeing it at least that many times again. I watch it whenever I'm feeling down; how could anyone fail to feel better when faced with swords, guns, and leather-clad prettyboys kicking zombie heads off? This is comfort cinema at its very best.
Despite the fact that, lacking a plot, the movie goes from one fight scene to the next with almost nothing in between, the beautiful and rather dreamy choreography makes it feel like an arty Yakuza-themed ballet rather than non-stop murderous violence. Endearingly sweet-faced tough guy Sakaguchi Taku stars as an amnesiac escaped convict with an unerring eye for fashion (even if he has to rob a corpse or three to complete his 'look'), who never loses a fight and has no compunctions whatsoever about hitting girls. Toss in a reincarnated megalomaniac, a bizarre duo of extraordinarily dumb detectives, and a creeptastic 'Forest of Resurrection' where even the dead keep on fighting, and somehow that all adds up to the most enjoyable action movie since - um - actually, I can't think of any other action films as enjoyable as this one (not even Terminator 2, or the countless Van Damme and Lundgren flicks that were my bad-day blanket movies before I discovered Versus). I think this is as good as the genre gets.
No comments:
Post a Comment