Versus (Special Edition)
by Ryuhei Kitamura
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Chieko Misaka, Hideo Sakaki, Kenji Matsuda, Tak Sakaguchi, Yuichiro AraiDirector: Ryuhei Kitamura
Brand: Media Blasters
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); English (Original Language); Japanese (Original Language); English (Published)
Format: Color, DTS Surround Sound, DVD, NTSC, Special Edition
Running Time: 119 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-08-19
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Tokyo Shock
Movie Reviews of Versus (Special Edition)
Movie Review: Paint the Forest
Summary: 5 Stars
"Versus" is cheap. It's low-budget. It's trashy. It's funky. It's mind-blastingly stupid in places.
And you know something? "Versus" is gigantic trailer-loads of bloody, gory, brutal, uber-stylish and often beautifully filmed good times.
Let's review:
Japanese Zombies? Check!
Splatter, gore, intestines, brains, severed heads, arms, legs, and virtually anything else that can be dismembered and used as a club, truncheon, weapon, or engine of destruction? Check!
Cool leather trenchcoats? Check. Katanas and wakizashis and a fully locked-loaded-and-primed paramilitary arsenal that would make the 5th Armored Division blush? Check, check, check!
"Verus" is Japanese director Ryuhei Kitamura's red-in-tooth-and-claw salute to flesh-eating zombie flicks like the immortal Peter Jackson's "Dead/Alive"---and what a salute!
"Versus" is just hardcore when it comes to hip: the too-cool-for-school Yakuza in their stylish shades, their tight-fitting leather trenchcoats, sleeveless leather battle dress, hip guns, hip nihilistic attitudes, hip giggles of bloodthirsty insouciance. It's all hip in "Versus", even when hip is slathered in blood and brains and gore. The Yakuza are bright plumed birds, so garish, so insultingly stylish, that you know they're marked for bloody death.
Not to worry. Death's no Game-Over in the Forest of the Resurrection.
Let's boil this thing down: you watch "Versus"---no, wait, you BUY the unrated 2-DVD disc "Versus" for two reasons: 1) Gorgeously shot (on a shoestring budget) High Style and 2) Yakuza on Yakuza action!
Plot? We don't need no steenkin' plot! But since you asked: Mysterious Prisoner KSC2-303 (played right down to the wire and the Miso-soup T by Tak Sakaguchi, who swings that katana like a champ and wears that leather trenchcoat with an aplomb that would have made Marlon Brando proud) escapes from a maximum security prison into the mysterious, fog-shrouded Forest of the Resurrection with a prison buddy. A prison buddy, ummm, handcuffed to a severed hand.
What's the Forest of the Resurrection? It's a dark, spooky forest. It's a dark spooky forest where the local Yakuza gang buries its victims (with their guns, mind you). It might possibly be an ancient aperture to Hell, one of 666 that exist in our innocent world.
A mob pickup turns sour, chiefly because Prisoner KSC2-303 decides he's a "feminist" (I'm not making this up---he says it) and tries to save the damsel in distress. And really, that's what "Versus" is all about. Sakaguchi, girl in tow, runs into the Forest. Yakuza follow. The battling prisoners and mobsters discover that the brutalized dead have a habit of coming back.
Zombies claw their way up from the grave, strapped up with their best-loved gats. Blood flows like meth at a rave.
The truth is, "Versus" was shot for maybe 5 bucks (that's 500 Yen!). And the corollary truth is, "Versus" looks like it was shot for a lot more: it has style in spades, rolling spinning camera sequences that would make most professional Hollywood studio directors blush with shame, and---this is the most important thing of all---it's flesh-ripping good fun!
Be warned, though: this isn't a horror movie. It's not remotely scary. But frankly, it's cool. It's engaging. At moments, it's nearly brilliant. And the tracking shots---my God, the tracking shots are intense. The timing is perfect. This is all about honor, all about vengeance, all about the Death Wish stated, announced, consecrated and celebrated between the once-and-future hero (and long dead Samurai warrior) played by Sakaguchi, and his immortal villainous and way-chic sorcerer nemesis (played to the uber-wicked hilt by Hideo Sakaki).
"Versus" is epic and hysterical. The movie is beautifully shot. The martial arts-work is tight and well done and very slick. The zombie do their thing and can even shoot---poorly. Blood flows. Fools get torn in half. Slaughter abounds. The Forest of the Resurrection is a Mecca for wanton carnage.
This isn't a cheap flick: far from it, and I'm sorry if I have implied it is. It has depth. It has ambition. For its miniscule budget, it is insanely technical in its shots and sweep.
He who becomes a monster gets rid of the pain of being a Man.
Literally.
JSG
Summary of Versus (Special Edition)
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