review: VERSUS (2000)
Ryuhei Kitamura’s VERSUS is, without a doubt, the best Japanese martial arts-cum-zombie film I’ve seen this year. How come I haven’t heard of this before??? I stumbled across it today in my local DVD store and I’m giving it four and a half stars.
Kitamura says he grew up watching “millions” of films and that’s where he learned his craft. He came to Australia to study film-making but quit after a week, when he realized he already knew everything he needed to know from watching ALIENS 90 times and MAD MAX 2 80 times.
He found Tak Sakaguchi, his lead actor, fighting on the street and approached him, saying “You aren’t putting your fists to good use. Why not be in my movie?” The rest, as they say, is history.
Gotta love that.
He also says that the actors he liked working with on set got bigger parts. The ones he didn’t liked got killed off early in the script (which he changed as he felt like it).
The plot? A couple of guys break out of prison. The escape through a forest. Some other gangsters meet them on the edge of the forest. They have kidnapped a female. Escaped prisoners and gangsters argue. Shoot out ensues. People die. People come back to life as zombies and attacked humans. More shoot outs. More zombies. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Sword fight. Limbs and heads are removed in the coolest manner you can think of. People die. People come back as zombies. Repeat. Get the picture?? Turns out the forest in question is one of the gates of hell, The Forest Of Resurrection, not that it really matters. Apparently the main characters have been repeating this battle for hundreds of years, not that it really matters. Who cares about the plot?? This is all about cool fight scenes WITHOUT the CGI.
Director Kitamura is a big fan of early 80’s film-making, before CGI ruined action films. He credits Sam Raimi, John “The Fucking Man” Carpenter, George Romero and Kurosawa as his inspirations, and it shows. According to IMDB, this was shot for $400,000, but it’s a hell of a lot more entertaining that the MATRIX sequels.
Kitamura’s recent film GODZILLA: FINAL WARS is getting great reviews and is showing this week at the Melbourne International Film Festival, so I’m going to try to get along to it. He’s also in production for a bigger budget sequel to VERSUS.
July 27th, 2005 at 9:31 pm
Cam, you really need to see Azumi as well. By the same director, and really shows how Tarintino really should have done the crazy 88 scene. ie. Destroying a whole town.
Heaps of fun, and cute chick to boot.
It’s available through Madman Entertainment’s Eastern Eye brand.
August 7th, 2005 at 6:39 pm
Just saw this film at your suggestion and I was blown away. Some people on imdb were bitching about the production value…the film was made for 400,000 bloody american dollars! I thought they did amazing things with such limited cash. Fantastic film with great music! Thanks for the recommendation!
August 7th, 2005 at 8:53 pm
Will - glad you dug it! I agree, amazing and actually kind of inspiring to know such a kick-ass film can be made for such a small amount of money. What did Speilberg spend on WOTW? $130M?? I’d rather see the financers make 30 more VERSUS than one more overblown, waste of time blockbuster.
November 26th, 2005 at 4:22 pm
I was a happy camper. At first, I didn’t think it would be a good film, but then, the fighting starts and it was a whole new ball game. Versus is probably one of the best action films I’ve seen in a while. Not too shabby. (Though ‘Ultimate Versus’ is more entertaining).
December 5th, 2005 at 8:09 am
Tak Sakaguchi escaped from a maximum security prison. He rendezvous with some gangsters however, the plan goes south when there is an argument and one of them is killed and they happen to be in the “Forest of Resurrection.” Ryuhei Itamura makes a samurai, kungfu, shooting, zombie, vampire, action, fantasy movie that just has way tooo much in it to be good. However, despite the bad action and story that doesn’t go anywhere it has turned into a cult movie in Japan and the US….Go figure