DEMON WARRIORS -- DVD Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 8/2/09

 

A supernatural action thriller that mixes bloody, bone-crushing fights and shoot-em-ups with some puzzling mysticism, Thailand's DEMON WARRIORS, aka Opapatika (2007), is a lot of sound and fury signifying something that I never could quite figure out.

The "Opapatika", or "demon warriors", are former humans who committed suicide and then, for some reason, were able to return to life as superior beings with special powers. A young human, Techit, seeks out an old Opapatika master named Sadok in order to get one of those reincarnation makeovers and is promptly instructed to blow his own brains out, which he does. Sadok tells the newly-risen Techit that since he was unusually intuitive in his former life, his Opapatika power is the ability to read minds. Unfortunately, every time he uses this sixth sense his other senses begin to fade one by one. Sadok's power isn't revealed to us at first, but we do discover that using it causes his body to decay a little at a time.

Sadok is seeking out other Opapatikas for some unknown reason and puts Techit on the trail, along with his super-badass human assistant, Thuwachit. The ones they're searching for are: Paison, a contract killer with unerring aim whose body takes on the wounds of his victims; Aruth, a gentle soul by day who turns into a kill-crazy psycho beast after sundown; Ramil, who can manifest his evil side into a seperate entity with a face only an exorcist could love; and Jiras, who considers his immortality a curse of endless suffering. Weaving her way through their lives is the mysterious Pran, a beautiful woman who becomes an object of great conflict among them all.

Thuwachit narrates the story and doles out exposition like a gum machine although I can't figure out what he's talking about half the time. But mainly he leads group after group of armed soldiers into furious battles with the Opapatika, with the hapless humans getting the ever-livin' crap kicked out of them every time. These guys must be getting paid a ton of money because they just keep getting slaughtered by the dozens in several nicely-staged battle sequences drenched in cartoonishly spewing blood and flying limbs.

One particularly lively setpiece features an encounter between the soldiers and the deadly Aruth in the inner courtyard of an apartment building as they take the fight up and down stairs and across various landings, with lots of leaping and shooting and all kinds of horrible deaths. Thuwachit and his doomed army fare no better against the pistol-packin' Paison, who streaks amongst them firing off one kill-shot after another and racking up a death count that should keep the local morticians busy for months to come.

But as frenetic and action-packed as these scenes are, their one-sided nature--the Opapatika are practically invulnerable to physical harm--renders them a bit tiresome after awhile. The same can be said for the fights between the demon warriors themselves, which are filled with gunfire, swordplay, and carnage, but seem somewhat pointless since these guys just can't seem to manage to kill each other.

In the downtime between all this violence, the movie screeches to a crawl. There are some interesting backstories, Paison's being particularly moving, and some nice artistically filmed scenes of Pran gliding elegantly around the house in her windblown gown and listlessly playing the piano as Aruth and Ramil gaze at her like lovesick puppies. Jiras warns them to stay away from her, apparently knowing something about her that we don't know. Characters either talk a lot about being trapped between reality and limbo or sit around thinking about it, and Thuwachit does some more narration for us, which he is wont to do.

The Pran situation eventually erupts into another big gunfight in her house between all the demon warriors, including Techit, who hasn't really done much up till then besides smoke cigarettes. (According to the synopsis, he's supposed to be a detective, but I never really got that impression.) The rapidly-deteriorating Sadok eventually shows up and reveals his connection to all this, including a surprising link to Pran, and we finally discover just how sinister his intentions are.

By the time we get to the last two or three prolonged battle scenes with the Opapatika mowing down soldiers like so many cans of tomato soup or having generally pointless fights with each other, I was looking forward to seeing them all finally start to friggin' die already. Making things even harder to endure is the fact that for some reason, director Thanakorn Pongsuwan suddenly eschews the perfectly good style that he's employed for the first two-thirds of the film and starts doing everything in highly-annoying Shaky-Cam. This detracts from the dramatic finale in which the story of Thuwachit (my favorite character since he's such a hardcore badass for a human) is resolved along with the insidious scheme of his master Sadok. At least we get to see some of these invulnerable bastards getting killed at last, which comes not a moment too soon since by now things have started to list perilously toward the boring side.

The DVD is in 1.78:1 widescreen with 5.1 and 2.0 Dolby Digital sound. You can listen to it in the original Thai with English or Spanish subtitles, or in an English dub. Included as a bonus feature is a 15-minute "making of" featurette.

DEMON WARRIORS has cool makeup effects, stunningly violent and bloody action (complete with massive spew), and some very nice production design and cinematography. But aside from the exciting early fight scenes, the story tends to get exceedingly dry and the action becomes repetitive. I did like this movie to a certain extent and appreciate the effort put into it, but the fadeout came as a bit of a relief.

DEMON WARRIORS -- DVD Review by Porfle

VANQUISHER -- DVD Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 3/28/11

 

The Thai action flick VANQUISHER, aka "Final Target" (2010), is loaded with action but it's a hit-and-miss deal, with several sequences that don't quite live up to their potential.

CIA black ops agent Claire (Jacqui A. Thannanon) is sent to Thailand to capture a terrorist.  She's also ordered to liquidate her "Vanquisher" task force once the job is done, so she takes off in a helicopter with her captive and then blows up the dock that the ladies are standing on.  

One of them, a Thai police force agent codenamed "Gunja" (Sophita Sriban), survives and returns to duty.  When Claire is ordered back to Bangkok two years later in pursuit of another terrorist, she runs into Gunja again, and this time the two warrior women are on decidedly less-than-friendly terms. 

VANQUISHER is nicely directed and shot for the most part, but the fact that this is Manop Udomdej's first action film is pretty obvious.  Camerawork and editing are all over the place in several scenes even though the choreography is good enough not to need such cosmetic misdirection.  The action is often confusing as we try to make out what the seemingly capable performers are doing through a barrage of shaky-cam images.



Still, the film manages to be exciting once things pick up around the halfway point and there aren't so many scenes of people sitting around spouting exposition.  Once all the plot details are ironed out the pace stays pretty brisk through a steady series of gunfights, sword battles, and chases, all featuring an impressive variety of stunts.  The frustrating thing is, you keep wanting these scenes to be better than they are--with more skillful handling, this movie could've been downright exhilarating.

Doing their part to keep us on the edge of our seats are the three leading ladies, who are not only beautiful but can kick some big-time ass in the action setpieces.  At first, Sophita Sriban looks way too cute and likable for the role of Gunja, but this impression is quickly dispelled as soon as she starts slinging a sword or blasting away with twin automatics.  Like Bruce Willis, she has a great "war-face", which director Udomdej captures exquisitely as he does the other female leads--the guy does love to photograph these ladies at their best.

As the duplicitous Claire, Jacqui A. Thannanon has a strong presence and is both sinister and exotic.  The only downside to her performance is that she seems to stumble a bit over the English dialogue--when speaking her native tongue (the film has a bilingual screenplay) she's terrific.  Lovely and lithe Nui Ketsarin plays Sirin, a Thai cop who teams up with Gunja against Claire and her ninja goons, and matches Sophita Sriban's acting skills in the frenetic fight scenes.
 

A late plot development has Bangkok on the verge of being racked with explosions which the bad cops plan to blame on the terrorists, and, while this angle isn't explored as fully as it should've been, it does give the SPFX guys an excuse to cook up some fake-looking fireworks.  Other digital effects range from fair (the scene where Gunja jumps a dirt bike onto a moving train which is then blasted with a bazooka) to not-so-hot (a ninja turns into a cartoon during an upwards leap).  One of the film's strengths is a robust, percussion-heavy musical score by Patai Puangchin.

The DVD from Magnolia's "Magnet" label is in 1.78:1 widescreen with English and Thai Dolby Digital 5.1 sound.  Subtitles are in English and Spanish.  In addition to the international trailer, extras consist of an eight-minute "making of" featurette and another which gives us a look behind the scenes during filming.

VANQUISHER survives a slow start to become a hokey but fun guns-and-swords fest with some very appealing female characters.  The main drawback is that you might wear yourself out trying to mentally reshoot and re-edit the action scenes so that they'll be as good as they should have been. 

VANQUISHER -- DVD Review by Porfle

ZEBRAMAN 2: ATTACK ON ZEBRA CITY -- DVD Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 11/13/11

 

If you ever wondered what a cross between Christopher Nolan's THE DARK KNIGHT and Joel Schumacher's BATMAN AND ROBIN might look like, Takashi Miike's ZEBRAMAN 2: ATTACK ON ZEBRA CITY (2010) might come pretty close.  Combining serious dramatic elements with the usual cheeseball stuff found in the more juvenile Japanese superhero adventures (but done on a lavish budget), it's an insanely deadpan seriocomic fantasy romp that works like a charm on both levels.

In the original 2004 film, a mild-mannered school teacher named Andrew Kim (Show Aikawa) assumed the identity of failed TV superhero Zebraman to stop an alien invasion and ended up temporarily gaining his superpowers for real.  Here, he's captured by the evil Kozo Aihara (Guadalcanal Taka) and placed in a centrifuge chamber which splits his good and bad sides into separate entities.  Good Kim now has white hair and amnesia, while his evil half is a black-haired female whom Kozo names Yui and adopts as his daughter.

Fifteen years later, Kim awakens to find himself in a Tokyo that's been renamed Zebra City and is now run by Kozo, with Yui keeping the masses in line as super-sexy pop star Zebra Queen.  Twice a day for five minutes," Zebra Time" allows the skull-faced police force to legally kill anyone, so a wounded Kim ends up in the care of his former pupil Asano, a male nurse devoted to helping Zebra Time survivors.  One of Asano's patients is a little girl, Sumire, still possessed by one of the previous film's aliens, and when Kim comes into contact with her his memory is restored along with his Zebraman powers.  With Kozo and Yui planning to spread Zebra Time throughout the rest of the world, Zebraman must leap into action once again to stop them, confronting his own dark side in the bargain.



First of all, the seriously cute Riisa Naka as Yui is awesome.  She inhabits her character with a vigorous enthusiasm and is wildly flamboyant in her actions and evil facial expressions, not to mention the way she throws herself into the song-and-dance stuff in Zebra Queen's music videos.  Literally the embodiment of evil, her Zebra Queen is stunning to look at and exciting in her evolution from simple bad girl into superpowered villainess reveling in chaos and destruction. 

For me, the film's most effective straight dramatic scene comes when she turns against Kozo in the back of their limosine as smitten lackey Niimi (Tsuyoshi Abe) looks on in wry admiration.  The way Miike builds to this key point in the story, along with the cunningly subtle but menacing musical score and the malevolent glee Naka conveys during Yui's violent outburst, add up to a powerful and rewindable moment.

With all the DARK KNIGHT seriousness with which Kim, Asano, and the rest of the good guys treat the character of Zebraman and his quest to wrest Tokyo from the depths of corruption, the outrageous comedy and over-the-top fantasy elements take on an added richness.  Zebraman's heroic comic-book exploits during the numerous fight scenes are a heady blend of undiluted cheese (including the usual hokey wirework, corny dialogue, etc.) with dazzling design and production values. 

When Zebra Queen unleashes one of the gelatinous green aliens from the first film on Zebra City and it grows to Godzilla-like proportions, leveling skyscrapers and incinerating city blocks with its heat breath, the stage is set for an epic battle brimming with mind-boggling visuals that are rendered with some top-notch CGI work.  Even the most lowbrow sight gags--as when the mammoth alien repels Zebra Queen with a noxious hurricane fart--are treated as high drama, as is the incredibly ridiculous final solution employed by Zebraman against the creature.



Show Aikawa's performance as the befuddled everyman who becomes the grimly-determined and supremely confident Zebraman is right on the money throughout, with the rest of the cast in top form as well.  Much fun is had with Naoki Tanaka's character of Ichiba, who played the title role in a "Zebraman" TV series and fancies himself a match for the real-life bad guys when the trouble begins.  Talented child actress Mei Nagano adds to the film's genuine emotional depth as the alien-possessed Sumire.  Guadalcanal Taka as the comically vile Kozo is especially good in the "creation" sequence, cavorting about his cavernous, Giger-inspired mad laboratory like a crazed Dr. Frankenstein.

The DVD from Funimation is in 1.78:1 widescreen with Dolby 5.1 Japanese soundtrack and English subtitles.  Extras on Disc 2 include the in-depth (almost 90 minutes long) documentary "The Making of 'Zebraman 2: Attack on Zebra City'", "The Making of 'Zebra Queen's Theme' Music Video", five cast and crew interviews, and original trailers and commercials for the film.  (The film comes as a 3-disc Blu-Ray/DVD combo--this review is for the DVD and its extras only.)

Takashi Miike and scriptwriter Kankurô Kudô have created a fascinating dystopian future whose comedic touches make it no less effective as scintillating sci-fi.  While the unabashedly bizarre nature of ZEBRAMAN 2: ATTACK ON ZEBRA CITY will no doubt put off many viewers, those open to such freewheeling weirdness may find it akin to plunging their hands into a cinematic treasure chest and coming up with fistfuls of pure, glittering fun.

ZEBRAMAN 2: ATTACK ON ZEBRA CITY -- DVD Review by Porfle

TRIGUN: BADLANDS RUMBLE -- DVD Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 9/4/11

 

Cliched though they may sound, "rollicking" and "rip-roaring" are pretty good descriptive words for director Satoshi Nishimura's TRIGUN: BADLANDS RUMBLE (2010), an eye-pleasing anime that's bursting at the seams with fast-moving action and comedy.  A feature-length version of the manga by Yasuhiro Nightow and the popular television series, it's a dense conglomeration of sci-fi, steampunk, Westerns, and various other genres with energy and style to burn.

The film opens with hulking outlaw Gasback and his three henchmen robbing a fortress-like bank but then having a falling out over Gasback's tendency to invest all their spoils in bigger and more elaborate robberies, which is his sole motivation.  Before the three traitors can kill him, however, he's rescued by Vash the Stampede, who values all life even more than he values fun, adventure, and donuts.  Unfairly regarded as a villain and bearing a sixty-billion double-dollar price on his head, Vash (known as "The Humanoid Typhoon") is a wanderer who only wants to help people and have a good time. 

Gasback, meanwhile, has patiently waited twenty years for his former allies to rise to positions of wealth and prominence, so that his revenge will be even greater.  After destroying the livelihoods of the first two, he's on his way to Mecca City to bring down Caine, who is now the mega-wealthy owner of the town's massive power plant.  News of Gasback's impending arrival has drawn hundreds of bounty hunters from all over, including the beautiful Amelia who has some unfinished business with him.



Jittery insurance agents Meryl Stryfe and Milly Thompson, old friends of Vash, are also in town to protect Caine's giant bronze statue of himself, which their company has insured for five billion dollars.  And mysterious clergyman Nicholas D. Wolfwood, another of Vash's past acquaintances, shows up as Gasback's current bodyguard, fulfilling a debt to him with the help of his huge cross-shaped rocket gun.

With its sleek character design and detail-packed backgrounds, TRIGUN: BADLANDS RUMBLE is a constant joy to look at.  Along with a colorful vehicular caravan, the bounty hunters travel to Mecca City aboard a huge steamship that hovers across the desert and serves as the setting for some lively encounters between Vash, Amelia, and some troublesome competitors.  The city itself is a clever combination of modern and Old West design, where the main characters engage in an old-fashioned barroom brawl before Gasback's attack sparks a spectacular battle sequence filled with sound and fury.

With so much explosive action going on, the body count in this bullet-riddled but lighthearted tale is practically nonexistent.  Much of the emphasis is on comedy as Vash courts an unwilling Amelia, who is literally allergic to men, while Meryl and Milly work themselves into nervous fits worrying about the fate of Caine's big, gaudy statue. 

Even hardbitten characters like Gasback and the hordes of bounty hunters out for his head contribute to the story's often deadpan-comic atmosphere.  The story isn't all fun, however--surprisingly, things get a little emotional now and then, particularly when we learn of Amelia's tragic origin and at least one of the main good guys bites the dust. 



Before the dust settles over the ravaged Mecca City, the action heads out into the desert as the bounty hunter caravan pursues Gasback in a thrilling sequence heavily inspired by THE ROAD WARRIOR.  Later, a final showdown between the good guys and the bad guy revels in heaping helpings of Spaghetti Western goodness, with Sergio Leone's influence nicely recycled into over-the-top cartoon visuals.  Here, all the various threads of the story are neatly tied up with a satisfying conclusion that extends through the closing credits crawl. 

The DVD from Funimation is in widescreen with English and Japanese Dolby 5.1 sound and English subtitles.  Disc one is the movie and some Funimation trailers.  Disc two contains a number of bonus features including several lengthy, lively cast-and-crew panel discussions at various locations including the film's premiere.  There's also a post-recording short, promotional clips and trailers, and other assorted tidbits.

Like an old Mad Magazine comics panel from the 50s, TRIGUN: BADLANDS RUMBLE is so richly detailed that it bears repeat viewing just to take in everything you missed the first time.  But most of all, this seriocomic burst of creative energy is just a ball to watch.

TRIGUN: BADLANDS RUMBLE -- DVD Review by Porfle

SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE -- Movie Review by Porfle

  Originally published on 11/20/17

 

SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE (2002) begins Park Chan-wook's celebrated vengeance trilogy with the old story of a "simple plan" that inevitably goes all to hell.

Ha-kyun Shin plays Ryu, a green-haired deaf-mute who toils in a factory while desperately waiting for a donor kidney for his dying sister (Ji-Eun Lim). His attempt to purchase the necessary organ on the black market ends disastrously, as he loses not only all his money but one of his own kidneys as well. Then he gets laid off from his job just as the doctor informs him that a donor kidney, which he can no longer afford, is finally available.

Ryu's domineering girlfriend Yeong-mi (Du-na Bae), a radical political activist with terrorist ties, concocts a scheme to abduct the young daughter of wealthy businessman Park Dong-jin (Kang-ho Song) and hold her for ransom, with the naive confidence that it will be a "benevolent" kidnapping and result in happy endings for all involved.

Her prediction goes horribly wrong, as does the kidnapping, and she and Ryu find themselves the targets of a vengeful father whose emotional devastation demands a payment in blood. Ryu, meanwhile, attempts to track down the illicit organ merchants and extract some lethal payback of his own. Both find the price of revenge distressingly high.

"I wanted to make something that felt too real," director Park Chan-wook explains. "I wanted the audience to be tired when they finished the film." As opposed to the later OLDBOY'S flamboyant surrealism and absurdity, the bad things that happen during this film are disturbingly matter of fact, with no suspenseful music or editing, often occurring in the background of a shot. We're allowed to search the frame for information ourselves rather than have everything pointed out to us, which can be strangely unsettling.

"As a director, I think this unkind way of presenting the story makes the viewer a more active participant in the film," says Park. Lengthy wide-angle shots often place the characters far from the camera, punctuated by unexpected images from odd angles which tease us with brief snippets of information.



One of the most important death scenes in the film occurs almost peripherally within the frame as the static camera lingers over a placid rural setting. Without the usual editing and camera angles leading the viewer through the scene, we're left to watch helplessly as the tragedy unfolds with dreadful inevitability.

Still, Park occasionally gets up close and personal, as in a brutal torture-by-electricity scene or a shocking knife murder of a man by a group of terrorists. Here, in a subtle bit of absurdity that's almost funny, the camera impassively observes the dying man as he strains to read the death warrant pinned to his own chest by a knife.

Even in a sequence which in any other film might play out as a brisk action setpiece, such as Ryu's bloody final encounter with the organ merchants, Park tweaks our expectations by approaching the familiar scenario with a fresh and pleasingly odd perspective.

"When you set out for revenge, first dig two graves," someone told James Bond way back in 1981's FOR YOUR EYES ONLY. Here, Park Chan-wook takes that hoary old proverb and dramatizes it in dispiritingly downbeat and often heartrending new ways, focusing in almost clinical fashion on tragic details that linger in the mind.

Perhaps the most disturbing thing about this chain reaction of consequences is that there are two sides headed for a deadly collision, and our sympathies extend to both of them. (This is a theme that will carry over into the next film in the series, OLDBOY.)  SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE is hardly the kind of revenge flick where Charles Bronson blows away bad guys as we cheer through our popcorn. For these unfortunate characters, vengeance ain't necessarily good for what ails 'em.


Read our full review of Palisade Tartan Asia Extreme's eight-disc DVD set THE VENGEANCE TRILOGY

Read our review of OLDBOY
Read our review of LADY VENGEANCE

SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE -- Movie Review by Porfle