Versus (2000/II)

User Rating:

6.7/10   

Director:

Ryûhei Kitamura

Writers:

Ryûhei Kitamura (writer)
Yûdai Yamaguchi (writer)

Release Date:

20 February 2002 (France)

Genre:

Action | Comedy | Fantasy | Horror

Tagline:

Witness a battle no one has ever seen

Plot:

There are 666 portals that connect this world to the other side. These are concealed from all human beings. Somewhere in Japan exists the 444th portal.... The forest of resurrection.

Plot Keywords:

Forest | Escaped Convict | Gruesome | Samurai | Back From The Dead

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Tak Sakaguchi	...	Prisoner KSC2-303
Hideo Sakaki	...	The Man
Chieko Misaka	...	The Girl
Kenji Matsuda	...	Yakuza Leader with butterfly knife
Yuichiro Arai	...	Motorcycle-riding yakuza with revolver
Minoru Matsumoto	...	Crazy yakuza with amulet
Kazuhito Ohba	...	Yakuza with glasses
Takehiro Katayama	...	Red-haired assassin
Ayumi Yoshihara	...	Long-haired female assassin
Shôichirô Masumoto	...	One-handed cop
Toshiro Kamiaka	...	Samurai warrior
Yukihito Tanikado	...	Cop with Barrett
Hoshimi Asai	...	Short-haired female assassin
Ryosuke Watabe	...	Yakuza zombie in alligator-skin coat
Motonari Komiya	...	Other prisoner

Also Known As:

Down to Hell 2 (Japan: English title) (working title)
The Ultimate Versus (Japan) (director's cut)

MPAA:

Rated R for strong pervasive violence and gore, and language.

Runtime:

119 min | Australia:115 min | South Korea:102 min

Country:

USA | Japan

Language:

English | Japanese

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Canada:16+ (Quebec) | Germany:18 (cut) | Germany:Not Rated | South Korea:18 | Australia:R | France:-16 | Japan:PG-12 | New Zealand:R18 | UK:18 | USA:R (cut) | USA:Unrated | Germany:BPjM Restricted

Company:

KSS

Trivia:

The cast, crew, and director (who call themselves Team Versus) had so much fun making this film that director Ryûhei Kitamura purposely filmed the movie with no ending, with hopes that they would be able to make a sequel. The DVD has proved to be a cult success in both the U.S. and Japan, so Japanese film companies have green-lit the sequel and given it (supposedly) an exponentially higher budget. Team Versus plans on principal photography in mid-2005.

Goofs:

Crew or equipment visible: The first time the main character encounters zombies in hand to hand combat, a rope harness can be seen pulling the zombie back towards the tree.

Quotes:

Undead Thug: Why is nothing happening?

Movie Connections:

Spoofed in Gojira: Fainaru uôzu (2004)

Extremely entertaining post-modern pastiche

From the get-go, you'll know that this is a film that relies almost solely on its style and its visual slickness. Low budget in the good sense, Versus resembles early Sam Raimi or Peter Jackson works (Bad Taste springs primarily to mind). It combines good-humored gore with Luc Besson-ish wide lens shots and quirkiness (the characters here reminded me of The Boondock Saints in their flamboyance), along with some very creative martial arts sequences. At some point, in fact, it gets so over-the-top it starts to play out more like a Stephen Chow movie. It then jumps from Night of the Living Dead to Mortal Kombat to Highlander, making a stop or two at X-Men along the way. This eastern/western mix works surprisingly well and the result is highly entertaining, if you enjoy this kind of thing. Just don't go looking for any depth, causality, plot logic, or plot altogether, really. The few dialogue scenes are a mess (excluding the one that takes place when everything turns an orange shade, about an hour into the film), and often serve only as a backdrop for canted steadicam close-ups and multi-character Mexican standoffs. This is not high brow cinema, it's high octane. And it was perfectly fine by me. It is when the film discards some of its humor that it begins to lose its charm, but even then, the spectacularly choreographed martial arts kept me entertained. I would be interested in seeing "The Ultimate Versus" – a director's cut that's ten minutes longer and has CGI special effects, according to IMDb.

P.S. There are few things I hate more than a dubbed movie, but in this case (like in Shaolin Soccer), I found that at certain scenes (particularly ones involving "the runt" – the wacky short guy), the English dubbing actually adds to the absurdity of the film. Anyway, the DVD offers both the American and the original Japanese dialogue tracks.