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Column by Scott Green
A big thanks to AICN reader Dan of geekadelphia for sending in this early look at the live action Blood: The Last Vampire.
Tonight I was able to see an advanced screening of the completed version of Blood: The Last Vampire at Wizard World Philadelphia, the movie is set to open in a limited release July 10th. The Story of Blood:the last vampire is something like this, it’s the story of Saya who is a 400 year old “halfling”(Father was human and mother was a vampire) who on the outside appears to be your average 17 year old Japanese school girl with an affinity for samurai swords. In her spare time she hunts vampires because, due to her condition vampires are the only things she can feed upon and with her epically honed over 400 years samurai sword skills she shows Blade a thing or two. The story takes place near a US military base in Japan during the Vietnam war era. The film is directed by Chris Nahon who also directed Empire of the Wolves, and Kiss of the Dragon. It stars Gianna in the title role of Saya, whom you might remember from the korean movie My Sassy Girl who actually does a really good Saya. I think they made a conscious choice not to sexualize Saya or make her cute because she is dressed as a Japanese school girl and it think it pays off, because it makes that fact that she does the things she does a bit more believable. Alice Mckee plays the role of Allison Miller the daughter of the General who oversees the base, where most of the film takes place. This is one of her first film roles and I think she did a good job playing Saya’s damsel in distress. JJ Feild a UK actor who plays Luke one of Saya’s handlers for the council steals the show on numerous occasions and really manages to stand out quite a bit in this film. When doing a good adaption of anything be it a graphic novel, anime or video game there is one cardinal rule you must abide by, and that is staying true to the sprit of the original and respecting the source material. When Hollywood chooses to adapt anything there is a reason because it was successful. There is a pre-installed fanbase for this so less advertising and explaining what the film is about will have to be done.People who like the original source material are usually pretty inclined to see it and this is where Blood: The Last Vampire succeeds on quite a few levels. Within the first 10 minutes you can tell not only has the writer and director seen the source material and have decided to honor it with this incarnation, but they have made that rare decision to not only stay true to the dark roots but to take it to the next level as well and make a full fledge horror movie. The usual course of action is the horror elements are toned down while action elements are turned up because it’s proven people like action movies more than horror. The movie follows the plot of anime quite closely from the start but since it is an hour and half they have decided not to leave it quite as ambiguous as the anime, but fill in the missing back story rounding it out quite a bit and with the original Japanese production company fronting the money for the production I think they might of had a say in how the story turned out. The piece now has an actual ending albeit a very Japanese one, if you have seen enough anime you know what I mean, it ends but it is just a bit vague and open to interpretation. Don’t get me wrong I enjoy things that make you think a bit and aren’t just handed to you, here again another good decision. Now with this being a horror movie it is indeed a HORROR MOVIE. The film seems heavily influenced by Kill Bill action wise but instead of simple street thugs Saya is fighting and killing copious amount of vampires dismembering them in neat and interesting ways. With the producer of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and Hero you would expect nothing less than awe inspiring fight sequences with some pretty insane wire work thrown in for good measure. Now speaking of the vampires these are not your sparkly Twilight ones, these are more a Japanese brand of vampires with a bit of demon thrown in for good measure and very close to the ones in the anime, which I think is part of the problem that they don’t exactly translate well from 2D to 3D. Now if I had to say this film had a major weakness it would be the CGI of the higher level vampire demon creatures Saya fights. If you are at all familiar with Japanese films your very aware of this weakness in their cinema, because they like to keep their special effects work within the country and no doubt american effects houses can’t be cheap. When I saw the first vampire change into his new form I winced a little bit because it almost appeared a little silly and the film had been doing so good up until then and I really wanted to enjoy it. The film makers I think knew this was a weakness and decided to keep this effect limited throughout the film.You do get use to them but I really think they could have implied more to loose the cheese factor these special effects promote. I also guess because of the title of the film they also use a very interesting blood effect whenever someone is wounded or their head is blown up with the blood appearing very congealed and almost a bit like little droplets of red matter from Star Trek this only doesn’t make sense when you see blood on a character or an object and it doesn’t have the same constancy, but honestly these are only my fannish nitpicks. I honestly can say if you enjoyed the anime you will enjoy this film or if you liked Kill Bill and a bit of the ultra-violence you would probably enjoy this film as well. I think it stands well enough on it’s own that you don’t need to see the anime or have read the light novels or manga to enjoy this. I came into this with average expectations and I was floored with how they not only got the adaptation right but made a really good kung-fu samurai horror flick as well. The acting is good for a genre film and the roles are carried well my only gripe would be the special effects work but the story is solid and that helps quite a bit.
Scott here... I recently heard from Mark Russell, author of Pop Goes Korea (reviewed in the Wall Street Journal here), concerning a correction and a counter-interpretation. Russell points out that Blood: The Last Vampire is "a Bill Kong production (Edko Films) out of Hong Kong, along with some French money. A quick look at the credits shows almost no Japanese influence. " On his Korean Pop Wars blog, Russell notes About halfway through the film, the mood shifts, and it begins to feel like a Hong Kong movie like CHINESE GHOST STORY, with a lot of really frenetic action sequences and cheap special effects. One of the biggest action sequences is really poorly done, and looks like the producers ran out of money. The story changes from the original anime, too, acquiring a ridiculous backstory that is unnecessary and really, really cheesy.
