RateItAll: The Opinion Network

I wouldn't call the acting impressive, but the movie itself was awesome. Basically the one who pulls the whole thing together is the director. It's definately worth the watch tho. Zombie movie with a twist.. but the ending rapes the whole movie.

Ryuhei Kitamura's finest film and a combination of so many different genres and ideas that the idea of staging them all on a relatively small budget of $400,000 in the space of two hours would seem impossible to all but the most optimistic film-maker. Kitamura was that filmmaker. What we have here is a film rooted in the buddhist belief in re-incarnation and the omnipresent nature of the eternal struggle between good and evil, featuring guns, samurai swords, martial arts, zombies, crazed Yakuzas, film montages, motorcycles and slapstick horror movie parodies. These elements all converge in the main setting of the film; the ominous Forest of resurrection. Sounds patronizing and far fetched? Au contraire, Kitamura pulls it all off with unmitigated style. He accomplishes this through sheer creativity, unorthodox camera angles that reflect the actions and feelings of the characters and a fabulously eclectic soundtrack which sets the right mood for every scene. The acting is mostly nothing special (Except for Kenji Matsuda's wonderfully flamboyant knife wielding Yakuza character and Hideo Sakaki who is good in any role he plays) but this film is a tour de force in terms of direction, Kitamura is the real star. A little like Miike's films, Versus disregards genre protocols and makes an all out attempt to be (as Kitamura puts it) an entertainment movie and entertaining it certainly is. As a consequence of its originality, humor and unprecedentedly clever (and incredibly frequent) action sequences this film is my favorite Japanese movie and is likely to remain so for a long long time.