I told myself not to bother with this flick. God himself tried to tell me to take the night off by filling my typical pre-movie stop with filthy yuppies at 6 PM on a Thursday night. But I muddled through and very nearly stayed awake for the entire movie.
I’m just a little weary of very pretty, spectacularly forgettable films. Especially ones that masquerade as issue pictures. Hell, only this year I’ve sat through two of these, counting Ultraviolet. Anyone else remember Aeon Flux? Nah, me either.
I think that this particular picture may have suffered from a very interesting and unique flaw. I think the filmmakers were trying to make a live-action anime and never really intended for the movie to play well with American audiences. The action sequences certainly back me up, the society was that sort of asian dominated futuresque place we all expected growing up in the mid-80s, and the dialogue sounded like a poorly dubbed kung fu movie. I’ve seen movies with bad dialogue before but I’ve never seen one where every line would have sounded better if the actor’s lips were comically out of sync with the words.
No sir. I didn’t like it. But if the involved parties were trying to make a flick for Japanese audiences and were forced into a US release I will offer grudging respect and sincere sympathy.