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Hong Kong, France, China 2009
Director: Chris Nahon
Cast: Gianna Jun, Allison Miller, Yasuaki Kurata, Liam Cunningham, JJ Feild, Koyuki, Colin Salmon
Rating: R
Release Date: 4 June 2009 (Hong Kong)
Running Time: 1 hour 31 minutes
The Movie Review
Lather, Rinse, Repeat... as needed. Nothing new, nothing spectacular. Old 'n stale premise, before I decided to watch, I'd already got the feeling it would be a snooze-fest. But my curiosity overcame my initial opinion for I really want to see how Gianna Jun (or Jeon Ji-hyun) perform as the vampire-slayer. Just to inform you, she's a South Korean actress famous for her role in My Sassy Girl (2001).
Blood: The Last Vampire is a live-action remake of an anime film in 2000 entitled with the same name. The movie is set in post WW II, Japan at the U.S. military base, during the American occupation of Japan. Blood: The Last Vampire centers on a hundreds years old vampire slayer named Saya (Gianna Jun) whose main task is to slay the vampire leader, Onigen (Koyuki from The Last Samurai (2003)). She is trained by a martial arts
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master, Kato (Yasuaki Kurata). Upon doing his duty, he often teams up with an underground government organization. Currently, she is assigned to disguise as a student in the school nearby an air base to lure out and investigate Onigen's whereabouts. Saya is instantly mocked as Japanese in her class, although she doesn't mind that even a bit. But she's not the only one got 'shunned', the General's daughter, Alice (Allison Miller), is often bullied for her status, and these two misfits form a friendship when Saya saves her just in the nick of time before Alice got brutally slain by the vampires who disguise as students. Could Saya and Alice eradicate the vampires and get to Onigen?
Sigh... what can I say, this movie tries too hard to look cool. We got slow-motion being used for un-cool scene, horrible dialogue with forced English by its non-English-speaking actors, but the worst of all, the characters are unbelievably dull. Teenager who thinks like an adult, an angry army officer, the silent-type secret agent and the list could go on and on. But sadly, it's the female lead character that doesn't have any menacing vibe, she's too petite and by frowning all the time, that doesn't make her look dangerous. Look angry yes, but dangerous no. Honestly, her character would be better left on the comic book. This is worsen by the character of Alice (Allison Miller) who's obviously an irritating teen and look pretty fake for most of the time.
I do grateful for one thing only, to see Yasuaki Kurata in action and he is indeed has the most intense action in this film. Jeon Ji-hyun is not that bad in her action scenes with many difficult moves to do but unfortunately she's accompanied by poor CGI and we've seen a lot better CGI than that. And there's a twist near the end but it's highly predictable that some of you could guess what the line would be and even mouth along.
Action-wise, overall, they are pretty entertaining, even though I can't say that seasoned moviegoers would experience something new out of it. The story chooses to follow an ultra serious path, in a very rushed pace. It seems every scene is racing against time. The CGI is okay and the music score is okay. Blood: The Last Vampire is the type of story that I seriously think would enjoy in a form of Manga or comic book. But since I don't get to read it, and this movie was what I'm viewing, than they should have re-cast all the actors or to re-write the script. Veteran moviegoers, don't expect this movie to be a modern shock-movie type of entertainment. If you are still curious, renting is the safest option to avoid bigger disappointment.
For other cooler vampire-whackers: Blade's quadrilogy and Underworld's trilogy.
© iwan pranowo of Movielogy.com
posted: Feb 16th 2010 10:36 am
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