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Ryuhei
Kitamura's brilliant and excessive zombie action movie "Versus"
answers the question: can there be too much gore, fighting and gun
blazing action in a zombie movie? The answer is yes.
"Versus"
is like being trapped in your favourite restaurant for a dinner
party long after your appetite is satisfied. Despite all the riches
and flavours, after the sixth course all you want to do is go home
(or at least purge). "Versus" is the marathon of zombie
films. It has some of the greatest laughs, stunts and one-liners
this side of "Army of Darkness". Unfortunately, it continues
feeding you long after you've had enough.
"Versus"
manages to combine a lot of cult elements into a promising banquet
of zombie goodness. It begins with a historical flashback where
a lone samurai hacks his way through a crowd of zombies, giving
you a brief glimpse of the torso chopping, stutter-step direction
to come. The action moves forward to present day where two prisoners
(helpfully wearing jumpsuits emblazoned with the word: "lawbreaker")
stumble through a forest toward a rendezvous with a group of the
most ridiculous Yakuza hoodlum stereotypes imaginable. We know that
the meeting will end in gunfire because, well, that's just what
happens at gangland rendezvous.
The
problems between humans begin when the Yakuza reveal a mysterious
woman hostage they've brought along for unspecified reasons. This
irks one of the convicts who proclaims in one of the great one-liners
in zombie movie history, "I'm a feminist." This begins
the mayhem. No sooner has the first body hit the floor when it rises
again as one of the undead. You see, they've arranged to meet in
some supernatural forest that is a junction between our world and
.. some other world blah blah whatever. All you need to know is
that anyone who dies in the forest will come back to life.
Unlike
previous zombie movies there doesn't seem to be as simple a solution
to putting the undead down permanently beyond using a lot of
bullets. No shots to the head to destroy a zombie's motor functions,
just lots of bullets. This is one of the great single-minded
themes of "Versus". The audience likes guns, well, give
them lots of guns. Hell, give the zombies guns
as well.
"Versus"
seems to have been made to top as many horror / action tropes as
possible. You will see punches through bodies, decapitations, hand
chopping, double-gun action, triple gun action, big frigging guns,
big swords, people flying through the air. Every character seems
to have a theme song which ranges from thrash guitar to driving
techno. There are some great fighting scenes, belly-laugh gags and
a myriad of cute moments that make this a classic cult film. With
all this, is it possible that the film might drag? Yes, actually.
Not
only is "Versus" just too long, it defines excessive direction.
Ryuhei Kitamura has given free form butchery a new standard. Already
not helped by his low budget, Kitamura seems to be a master slave
driver of steadicam operators, throwing multiple viewpoints and
wildly ballistic camera movements into every scene. When the action
is not rabid, it slows down to a crawl during painfully symbolic
extended shots including one of the longest mid-fight freeze stances
ever filmed.
Even
with that caveat, it's an easy decision to recommend "Versus"
as one of the pillars of slaughter-comedy party movies, on par with
Peter Jackson's "Dead Alive". There's just so much in
this film, even if you go catatonic with the sheer weight of the
sweet stuff halfway through, it will still be one of the most entertaining
DVDs you'll own.
Note
on the DVD: Be sure to get the
official real version from KSS films. There's a bootleg HK
DVD special that is little more than a poor quality VCD rip. I ordered
mine from Luminous
Film and Video Wurks in California.
On DVD.
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