ヴァーサス
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A relentless one-of-a-kind sensory assault chock-full of hyperkinetic fight scenes, gangster shootouts, sword-slashing violence, and gory zombie horror, Versus was a key title amongst the barrage of innovative horror and action movies that appeared as if from nowhere from Japan at the turn of the millennium, leading to a new wave of appreciation for Asian extreme cinema. A mysterious face-off in a wooded clearing between two escaped convicts and a carload of sharply dressed yakuza holding a beautiful woman captive ends in hails of bullets and showers of blood. The location for this violent encounter is the mythic Forest of Resurrection, the site of the 444th portal of the 666 hidden gates that link this earthly domain to the netherworld and it didn’t get this name for nothing. As one of the surviving prisoners escapes with the girl into the darkness of the forest, disgruntled gangsters soon become the least of their worries as an earlier battle between a lone warrior against hordes of zombie samurai is carried over from a millennium ago into the present day... Versus caused a sensation both in Japan and internationally upon its release, launching the careers of director Ryûhei Kitamura and action star and fight choreographer Tak Sakaguchi. (Arrow Films)
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A cool movie. Nothing but cool fight scenes and cool shots with cool actors, cool sets and also cool directing. Only a cool plot or something similarly cool is missing. After all watching a cool duel for two hours in a row is not so cool anymore…Shame, otherwise individual things are completely awesome and cool. Really cool.
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At first glance, the Japanese horror movie Versus is quite an interesting genre mash-up between a period historical drama and a zombie horror movie. At second glance, however, it is just an ordinary zombie action movie, nothing more. Sure, some characters are almost like they were taken straight from the manga, although even those could not save an otherwise relatively predictable and ultimately uninteresting movie. Too bad, because it definitely had some potential.
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