Sooooo…how is that ‘Blood: The Last Vampire’ flick?
I dug the animated Blood: The Last Vampire. Great animation, nice action, and Japanese schoolgirls with swords is always a plus. Never read the manga, so I can’t offer an opinion on that account. I did read Mamoru Oshii’s novelization, which was a lot better than it had any right to be.
So how’s the movie? Again, haven’t seen it. But lots of other people have, so let’s have a little faith in the Wisdom of Crowds and see if we can’t form some sort of aggregate opinion, ‘kay?
Stephen Witty of the New Jersey Star Ledger assigns a generous three stars, saying:
But how can you not enjoy a film that has its heroine taking on her school’s mean girls with a razor-sharp samurai sword? Or slaughtering 50 demons at a time? Or a ninja who races toward his prey from underground, his sword sticking up through the leaves like a shark’s fin?
It’s not for everybody. Neither, for that matter, is warm sake, grilled ox tongue or Chinese opera. But for vampire fans who have been finding the whole “Twilight”/”True Blood” bloodsucker-as-Romeo genre a little anemic, well, “Blood: The Last Vampire” is a fast and welcome transfusion of thrills.
Sounds like Stephen and I are on the same wavelength, sot that’s promising. Moving along…
The unstoppable Roger Ebert agrees:
“Blood: The Last Vampire” is essentially a CGI fantasy, pleasing to the eye, and indeed based on a well-known 2001 Japanese anime. Gianna holds it together with a sympathetic performance, trying to win acceptance as the only Japanese girl in an otherwise all-American student body in the school on the U.S. military base. It doesn’t help her fit in when she dresses for her first day in a sailor suit; her wardrobe ideas must have become fixed in the “Madame Butterfly” era. Still, you gotta admit she’s fetching.
Of course, Roger has a long-standing reputation for favoring – well, dreck would be a charitable word. But again, the man likes what he likes and he’s not afraid to say it.
Moving on to the Village Voice:
But as enticing as “Blade meets 21 Jump Street” might sound, Kiss of the Dragon hack Chris Nahon’s live-action adaptation of a 2001 cult anime film is unexciting, incoherent, lamely acted, and carelessly written (set during the Vietnam war, its attempt at historical nuance is, “I can’t believe they’d let a Jap enroll here”), and even its F/X mish-mash is an eyesore. Slick wire-fu spectacles come courtesy of a Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon producer, while the incongruously clunky monsters are Ray Harryhausen throwbacks, and the movie’s incessant, cheaply produced CGI splatters look like oil geysers.
Yeah, I’m not too big on CGI blood either – but you really can’t avoid it in Japanese films these days.
So, what does Wesley Morris of the Boston Globe think?
Chris Chow’s screenplay seems to be out of fresh ideas before it’s really begun. Saya winds up in one of those new-girl-at-school plots. The base is full of American kids who think their new classmate is a freak – not because she’s a vampire but because she’s Japanese.
During kendo class, she winds up rescuing Alice (Allison Miller), one of her classmates, from a vampire attack. It’s the start of a dutiful friendship that, after what feels like hours, leads to the movie’s big showdown between Saya and the Japanese celebrity Koyuki, playing a serene vampire who wears giant sunhats and carries a paper parasol. These two hop from screensaver to screensaver trying to destroy each other. Backgrounds typically reserved for sleeping computers are now being tested on sleeping movie audiences.
Ouch…
So what do the internets think? Here’s Edward Douglas at ComingSoon.net:
However you try to justify this movie’s anime roots, “Blood: The Last Vampire” shows a new level of filmmaking incompetence previously only seen in the films of Dr. Uwe Boll. It is just plain awful and offers very little either to the vampire or the martial arts genres. Chris Nahon, director of Jet Li’s “Kiss of the Dragon,” shows that he hasn’t improved much, taking an incomprehensible script and weak cast, and turning the entire film into an ugly abomination that looks like total crap from top to bottom, mostly when there’s any CG involved. It all looks very cheaply done, especially the demon creatures Saya fights that look like they were done with Claymation. Seriously, if you can imagine the worst CG work you’ve ever seen in a movie ever, regardless of budget, this is much worse. Even the wire-heavy action scenes choreographed by master stunt coordinator Corey Yuen are ruined with Nahon’s terrible camerawork and the decision to use a diluted color palette that makes the film almost unwatchable at times.
Hmm. Well, this was a pretty small sample, but even this limited group wasn’t very encouraging. In fact, finding positive reviews was a little bit of a chore. For the record, Blood: The Last Vampire is running about 20% at RottenTomatoes.com. As always, your mileage will vary.
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