Casshern

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Summary:
Based off of the 1973 animated film Shinzo Ningen Casshan, it's the story of a bleak future plagued by chemical and nuclear war. Dr. Azuma is a renowed geneticist who requests the government to provide funding for his Neo-Cell program, a regenerative cell process that can replace human body parts and enhance brain power.
They refuse, and he's hired instead by a secret military faction in hopes of providing a better solution to the falling soldiers in the war.
Dr. Azuma's main goal is to find a cure for his ailing wife. His son Tetsuya joins the military in defiance of his father's previous shamings of the past, and is killed.
A strange lightning bolt strikes Dr. Azuma's unsuccessful cell regeneration pool after Tetsuya's death, causing the birth of dozens of super-human creatures known as Neo-Sapiens. Only four survive, and vow to take control of the world as the new race of superior beings.
Tetsuya is revived in this same pool after his death, and given a suit of armor capable of keeping his expanding muscular structure from tearing his body apart. It's up to Tetsuya to be humanity's Casshern, an ancient mythological creature that once protected an ancient village.

This is a not-so-complicated story, but there's a lot of explanation required. To sum it up in a nutshell:
In the future, one man strives to save humanity from a new super human race known as Neo-Sapiens.

Review:
I had been wanting to see this movie for the last 8 months, since I saw the kickass Japanese trailer so long ago. It was in Japanese, but damned if it didn't look totally awesome!
Did you like Sky Captain? Well, I thought it was alright. This movie's SFX are like a hyper-cracked out Sky Captain on speed. It's anime done with full motion actors. Casshern is definetely a visually unique picture that is sure to be emulated with tons of Japanese action movies for years to come.

If you're like me then when you watch anime there are going to be a few if not several moments during your time watching one that you say "What the hell is going on here?" Casshern brings plenty of those moments, too. The fans will say that it's because the symbolism is intelligent and designed to be thought-provoking to give viewers many different kinds of interpretations.
If you don't watch anime much (or at all), then it will be a while before you 'get' a lot of the cultural significance of many odd moments during a series.
There are a lot of movies that leave things open to interpretation, but rarely is this a good thing. Typically it means that the story is uneven and the overall director's, writer's, and/or other creative entities' vision of the story isn't solidifed once they release the title. Thanks to their unwillingness to make up their mind, the viewer has to try to figure it out. Then what happens is that the many fans with one side of the film's meaning will argue certain points of a story backing up their idea of its' meaning, but disregard the OTHER sides' references, therefore neither side is right because in the end the story contradicts itself at some point.
When it comes to Japanese anime, almost every series lacks a logical sequencing of events and contains moments of Japanese cultural references that can leave the average viewer going "what the hell?"
I think anime is alright, but I get tired of the same themes and plot devices being done over and over again in every damned series. This movie is no different from these same flaws, but hey it was interesting watching all the actors playing in a virtual world, and having them running towards each other with wind streaks coursing by as they are about to clash, and the two opponents are nearly frozen, clashing swords as you hear the obligatory *CHING!*...
It was pretty funny seeing all this done with live actors, and for a physical representation of the illogical inconsistancies of the laws of gravity in anime for the sake of visual artistry, this movie matches that style wonderfully.

Casshern is chock-full of deliberately framed montages bursting with color begging to be revered by the viewers' eyes. There is a lot of Computer Generated Imagery (CGI), but it's not meant to be based in a real world and we should know that it's for entertainment's sake. I hate it when a movie is CGI heavy and the effects pull us out of the realism of a moment, but this whole movie is unreal so I don't mind greenscreen mismatching environments. It's for visual entertainment and that is all.
Plus, I will have to say that the extended fight scene that occurs after Tetsuya breaks free and fights an army of robots... totally Uberly Badass! I dig that sequence like no other! That is some extremely over the top quick moving action! Rock and roll!!!
There was only one character that pissed me the hell off, and that was big-eyed moronic Neo-Sapien assistant Akubon. Jeez, man, I hated this guy! Everyone else was pretty cool. Luna is cute, Tetsuya is rad enough, and I basically just wanted to see lots of carnage and action-packed frenzy!
The action is alright, but there's so much quick-cutting and discontinuity that it's hard to pay attention to what's going on. I really wish they would have not tried so hard to BE a cartoon, and worked instead on allowing the audience to see what the hell people were doing to each other. There are some fight scenes that are interspliced with two or three other scenes going on at the same time with other people. One cutback will switch to the same moment as the previous shot, but then other times it seems as if 10 seconds had passed before we get back to the other group of people. I just had to sit back and let it go. It's an editing nightmare, and I don't like a lot of the attempts at being flashy and psycho-quick. I wished they'd slow down sometimes and just let things play out more logically.
Some parts of the movie are in grainy black and white film stock. I swear they used 3600 exposure grained film, maybe even higher. Other times they use high-grain color film that's oversaturated and the colors bleed into each other. Any of these several different kinds of film stock and pre- or post-processed filtered footage looks cool for a little while but ultimately becomes tiring. I thought some of the montages - especially the invading robots - was cool looking, but too many times the CGI or the animation become a big blur of color and blobulous texture that is too abusive to your visual senses and cuts away before you can get a good grasp on what you're seeing.
I'd say that this is the movie's biggest flaw. It's unwillingness to just slow down and give the audience a break from the daunting task of watching what happens onscreen. It's a 2 hour 24 minute movie, meaning that you have to deal will all this color or grain for longer than most movies that you go see.
I was wishing at some points to just get 5 minutes of a realistic surrounding so that my senses could take a breather.

So what did I think of Casshern overall? I liked it. I thought the story was pretty cool once I figured out that the strange symbols flying onscreen always occurred when something completely illogical was happening. I take it as Divine Intervention. There are things in this world that defy explanation, so if Tetsuya is at one spot and then half a second and a spattering of symbol flashes later he's several dozen miles away, well, it's just because that's the way things are. Or, if the cell regeneration lab is a failiure, but then symbols flash and a strange bolt of mechanical lightning comes out of nowhere resurrecting dozens of Neo-Sapiens from the murky depths of the non-working bile and no one really explains how this happens... well, once again those symbols are symbolism for the wild and wacky moments that occur in real life that people just can't explain with logic. Just have faith and take things as they come while watching Casshern.
The cool thing is, if you really try to think back on what is said about the small villages' belief in Casshern, and pay attention to the origin of these people, then include the speech telling clues about how the Neo-Sapiens came to be near the end of the movie, a lot of common questions are answered onscreen. The tough element to discovering some of the "what the hell?"s lies in the movie being subtitled, so when key plot devices are revealed in the final act during an action sequence, some of the major clues pertaining to these questions can easily be overlooked.
Fans of anime in general will know exactly what I mean by the strange temporal sequencing of events and defiance of all logic in storytelling. They'll also notice the recurring anti-war, anti-nuclear theme that's presented to us, and will probably love this movie because of the fact that it's a live-action anime.
The real concerns will come to those who aren't familiar with Japanese sci-fi/anime. This will probably be a challenge to watch.

I liked Casshern. I thought it was visually unique, and entertained more than it didn't, and I 'got' most of what goes on and even if I didn't get it, I don't care. I was just looking for some neat visuals, and this movie delivered the visual goods.

GRADE: B

Interesting Trivia:
Supposedly, this movie's budget was $6 million.

This movie, along with Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Sin City and Immortel (ad vitam) are the first four movies to have been shot almost entirely on a "digital backlot", meaning the actors are all shot on green/black/bluescreens with backgrounds added later. It's been an effect in use for several years now, but not to such a high extent as these films.
I'm sure the next on the list of the highest majority of actors being filmed on a "digital backlot" would be the current Lucas prequels. In his case, though, he's trying to pass it as a realistic replacement for real life. In the four movies previously mentioned, it's for artistic merit, NOT to pass for real movie sets and locations.
... Sorry, just had to do another cheap dig at Lucas. ... And no, I am not ashamed. He started it! HE's the one making sucky movies!

Reviewed 2/12/05