Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with yet more reviews of CASSHERN stemming from the one I posted last night from the mysterious and mighty Abstruse One! Seems like those who see it really dig it... even the guy who wrote the second, mor negative, but still 8 out of 10 star, review. Get your Asian cinema freak on!
Hello there Harry, I recently saw Casshern a couple days ago, and I guess I'll send you my thoughts on the film.
An anime show that spanned 35 episodes, as well as a movie. A story of a boy who joins with a cybernetic entity along with his robot dog, and fights a Robot gone mad. That is the story of Casshern, the anime. Upon seeing the trailer of this film, long long ago, we had all gone nuts over how great it looked, the action, the effects, the music. Well, the trailer failed to show us many things that I know I didn't realize were in the movie till about an two and a half hours ago.
So what do I think of it? Well, in the other thread I made, I praised it, but the truth is, is that I hadn't actually seen the movie yet, I had seen one action sequence from the trailer. It didn't do it justice, not at all.
Yes, there are a whole lot of themes in this film, and it gets tossed around quite a bit. Its a testament to the actors and director however, that with little knowledge of Japanese, I was able to understand most if not all of this movie. The acting is well done, from the lunatic buisness man, to the army seargent who kills a chairman in the middle of a meeting, they all show why exactly they were cast in this film. The Head Cyborg/superhuman, also displays a great deal of emotion, especially at the end when he realizes what he used to be. More on that later. Casshern himself perfectly displays a man who had had his life taken away from him, then brought back only to fight again. When he realizes that it was he, who participated in the killing of many innocents, he attempts to make amends.
The visual effects in this film, go above and beyond what one normally sees in Japanese, or asian cinema in general. While you know it is indeed cg, it doesn't matter because it fits the tone and coloring of the film so well, it might as well be real. The robots the magnificent flying airships, the lush cities, the forests, I've seen no better in a foreign film, and it sure as hell beats most high budget american films. As I said before, or may have forgotten too, the movie is not an action film. There are four main action sequences, but the film does not attempt to load itself up with fighting and pretty explosions. The director does not forget about the story. In fact, in this film, the action takes backseat.
The emotion expressed in this film, was enough to bring a tear to my eye by the end of the film. What with the Head Cyborg realizing that he was just a villiager before he was killed, along with his wife and all four of the cyborg superhumans. It turns out, that Casshern's father had been instructing the army during the war, to kill innocents and use their bodies as test subjects for the cyborgs. Casshern had killed the head cyborg's wife, under orders.
This is a dark film, and the music, the soundtrack, whether it ranges from Orchestral, to guitar, to rock, fits the mood perfectly for every individual scene.
I'm picky with my japanese and asian films. But I have never seen a movie like this in my life, period. It is a work of art, in my opinion, a perfect piece of cinema. I don't think I could ever find any faults with this film. I hope there isn't a sequel, because this was ended perfectly. Wonderful little nods to the series includes the helmet sitting on the doctor's shelf, as well as the dog who immediatly likes Casshern.
Verdict: This might just be my favorite film of all time.
If you use this review, call me Ryouga
And now on to an interestingly conflicted review...
I disliked the Matrix sequels, I thought Spidey 2 and X-Men 2 were better than their predecessors, I think CGI is for effects and not for entire scenes, I dislike M. Knight Pokemon's crapfests, I hated Returner, and I did not get an erection watching Kill Bill. Does any of that qualify me to write a review for AICN? Nope, but I've seen Casshern and I'm betting most of you havn't; step off.
I went back and read the other review for Casshern and checked the talk back section and thought I'd expound upon the first. Let me first say that I was a fan of the show back when it was called Casshan: Robot Hunter, so once I saw the trailer I freaked-out. I anticipated, I anticipated the crap out of this movie. Unfortunately, I was let down; not in M. Knight Makes-all-his-movies-the-same Village way but more like the Matrix sequels way. Not that it was bad, I just wanted more. Don't get me wrong, this isn't a negative review, well, just bare with me.
This movie has style, not the Quentin Tarantino odd way of telling stories style, but an actual visual style. Odd colors and glows permeate each scene until they feel as though they've leaped out of a fantasy novel.
The Abtruse One wasn't kidding when he talked about the amount of talking in this movie (or that nasty glare effect). Instead of saying this movie's a mix of DBZ, Final Fantasy, etc., I would say it's more like Marvel Comics trying to do a Bladerunner-esq film. Normally I can stand large amounts of discussion (it worked in the matrix) but I was expecting something like the cartoon. And, it may have just been bad dubbing, but a lot of the explanations just never made much sense.
After that first, grating hour we are finally treated to the good stuff. This was a pretty bad letdown. Long-suffering should produce a reward and instead we are treated to dicey edited fight scenes that end almost as soon as they start. Although, I can understand why. If a massive army of robots suddenly appeared and totally owned everyone there wouldn't be a whole lot of retaliatation, not to mention that most people (superpowers or not) do not throw themselves into harms way nearly as often as say, Spiderman. That's the only realism there is to the movie and it takes away from the fun. I'm all up for a good moral story every now and then but this was supposed to be a fun, blow everything up with really cool superpowers type of story.
The music was very good. It's not reliant on Pop stars to do mediocre music that people can sing along to (listening Nickelhack?) and allows for music that fits the mood of each scene.
*** SPOILER WARNING ***
I suppose the biggest let down of the whole movie would have to be the way it ends. If I understood it correctly, there's no room for a sequel and that's a huge mistake. They could have don the inverse of the Matrix series which is start out mediocre and end with a bang.
*** END SPOILER ****
I can't give Casshern a negative review because I love the content so much. The bad parts of the movie tend to balance with the awesome stuff. Really though, if you're not a fan of the show, you don't care about imported movies, or you don't like movies full of talking then wait till the movie is on DVD and buy it. Yes, buy it not rent it.
If I had a ratings system, I'd give it an 8 out of 10.
If you use this call me Brained Child.
