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| MISCELANNOUS |
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| Zombies, Gore, Kung fu, Swordplay and Hyper Kinetic gunfights; Sounds like the ultimate movie for cult movie junkies, well, Versus pretty much is. It’s one of those rare movies that has a “by a fan for fans” feel to it as it borrows from the Italian horror genre, Hong Kong’s Kung fu and old school John Woo, and little touches from The Matrix (some homage’s and one hilarious parody) |
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| Any film, which has an opening shot of a body being sliced in half by a Samurai, gets big thumbs up from me. We kick off the movie 500 years ago, where we find a samurai engaged in a battle with zombies in a forest. Once he is done with them he faces off against a man standing in a river, but is struck down and cut in half at the waist. |
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| We then jump forward to the modern day to the forest of resurrection in Japan, which is the 444th of the 666 hidden portals to the “other side” scattered around the world. When two escaped convicts meet up with the Yakuza that helped free them, one of the escapees (our hero of the movie) objects to the Yakuza holding a young women hostage, after some cool posturing and banter, our hero kills one of the Yakuza. Within minutes he has come back to life as a zombie, his partners and our hero gun him down. One of the Yakuza guns down the other escapee and he to returns as a zombie. Our hero takes this chance to flee into the forest with the girl and the chase begins. |
| Our hero finds some leather trousers and trench coat from a strung up corpse, now he’s ready for battle so to speak. What now follows are numerous action set pieces, stylised camera work and a brilliant electronic score. The films is full to the brim of over the top action, all of it top notch, especially the end duel. But a lot of other reviews say that the film is just “action, action, and action” and that the plot is weak. Yes, there is a lot of action; about 70% of the movie is action. |
| But there are breaks between the fights and gore where the plot begins to unfold; I thought the story was great, yes it is just there to give the action some meaning and purpose, but it’s fitting and interesting too. Another popular complaint is that the film could have done with some editing, I personally didn’t think so, editing it would sacrifice the movies epic feel which i think it has. Director Ryuhei Kitamura certainly has an eye for striking visuals, with the movie being set entirely in a forest, we get the chance to see some wonderful shots of the sun shining through the trees, that can fill a scene with mysticism and charm. All the performances are great, from our hero (Tak Sakaguchi) and main villain (Hideo Sakaki) to the crazy gun posing Yakuza and the 2 demented cops on our heroes trail. |
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| Another interesting note is that no characters have names in this movie; only our hero is referred to as his prison number. The ending is one of the coolest and surprising endings I’ve seen in a while too, it leaves you waiting for VERSUS 2, which should be out in a few years. Miramax, currently hold the rights for a US release, and rumours are that they have gotten Kitamura to go back and re-shoot some footage to “Americanise” the movie, especially the ending. Fucking Hollywood, I wish they would fuck off and leave good movies alone and stop trying to cannibalise them to cater for dumb cinema goers whose knowledge of Asian cinema goes as far as John Woo’s crappy American flicks and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. |
| BY YODASNOOG |