toddly6666

The Shadow! Indiana Jones! Superhero! Adventure! ummmm, no, not really. This movie sucks ass. K-20's movie poster shown above is more exciting than the actual movie. This is just another poor excuse of a Japanese blockbuster - poor pacing? Check. Boring? Check. A two hour movie with 90 percent filler? Check. Stupid-ass story? Check. Poor writing? Check. A villain that does the stereotypical evil laugh? Check. I'm tired of curving Asian movies just because they try to do something different. This movie just is bad. Yes, there are a couple of good action scenes (which build up to nothing), but there were also a couple good action scenes in "In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale".

It's pretty sad when a cartoon director, Hayao Miyazaki, is not only the best current director in Japan, but it seems like the only one. Who are the other good blockbuster directors in Japan? Just Miyazaki and Takashi Miike? How sad. (I'm talking about blockbuster filmmakers, NOT art-house directors).

The Hong Kong NTSC Region 3 DVD is better than expected. I was expecting crappy subtitles since the DVD back cover has some sloppy English translation, but the English subtitles are pretty good, with some mistakes here and there. The audio (Japanese DTS and DD 5.1) is great, much better than the anamorphic video. I don't remember if there were any extras, because what's the point for a sucky film.

MOVIE: 6
DVD VIDEO: 8
DVD AUDIO: 8.5
SUBTITLES: 7.5

You can watch the trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8P5rqavPTec

The review of this film at Twitchfilm.com and IMDB are much too generous.

I'll sell this DVD to anyone for 10 bucks.

manicsounds

But you still gave it a 6/10? To me, thats a tad above mediocre.

toddly6666

A 6 out of 10 is basically a "D". The grading scale of "1 to 10" actually doesnt make too much sense because the scores of "1 to 5" are all different levels of failure. But failure is failure!