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 Earlier
this year, I was invited to attend the North American premiere of a live
action rendition of a popular Japanese manga. Gantz was packed with
special effects action, bizarre UFO’s, and scream-worthy teen idol stars
wrapped from head-to-toe in skintight PVC. The idea was the souls of
recently dead folk convene in a featureless Tokyo flat where a
mysterious large black metal ball at the center of the room makes hitmen
out of them with their targets invariably being aliens hiding out on
earth. Each foray is scored by the all-seeing orb and the prize for a
hundred points is the winner having the option to get their life back or
resurrect a departed loved one.
Despite the promising premise, charming
stars and some really interesting ideas, Gantz felt very hollow and
clumsily- paced, with half-baked character development and none of the
scathing morals or social commentary of Hiroya Oku’s original manga. It
also didn’t help that Gantz was crippled by some of the absolute worst
English dubbing I’ve seen in decades; the producers couldn’t even be
bothered to match the dialog to the actors’ lips, reading from a
terrible script that was puerile and brain dead.
Picking up not long after the first film left off, Kei Kurono has become
an older brother of sorts; taking care of the younger sibling of his
dear friend, Masaru Kato, who was killed whilst beating up an alien on
one of their Gantz-ordered missions. Kei has been living a double life,
the first half amongst the living, working in a fast food joint and
shyly romancing Tae Kojima, a kindly girl who helps Kei look after
Kato’s little bro. The second half beings once Kei hears a ringing in
his ears that stops whatever he’s doing to steal away from sight as he
dematerialises inch by inch, transporting into the familiar bare flat
with the big ball in it. There he’s joined by a growing group of
survivors who have learned from Kei that it’s better to fight whatever
missions Gantz orders as a team rather than get slaughtered separately.
They are joined by some newly deceased souls, who eventually realise
they’ve been here before; having played and supposedly won their freedom
from Gantz’s orders. In a huge surprise to Kei himself, best mate Kato
reappears without benefit of Kei’s hundred-point wish and seems a bit
different somehow. It appears Gantz faces a triple threat of his own; a
powerful group of aliens wants revenge for all Gantz’s UFO annihilation
and a Tokyo detective learns there’s more to the cases of inexplicably
returned missing persons than meets the eye and attempts to track down
the freaky sphere for some answers.
The final quandary for Gantz is
like many interesting things made in Japan, he too runs on batteries and
those batteries are dying. What is a mysterious big black ball to do?
With the evident shortening of its lifespan, Gantz’s missions become
more inexplicable and desperate and eventually his choice of target is
one Kei simply can’t get behind, turning the team on each other in a
race for raised stakes of resurrection as Gantz fails.
What a
difference a dub makes. When invited to join the crowds at Japan Cuts
2011 premiere of Gantz: Perfect Answer, I really wasn’t expecting much,
but was open to being surprised. What a surprise it was. Gantz:
Perfect Answer is a million years apart from its predecessor in every
way; the pacing is whiplash-fast (Making the two-hour, twenty-minute
runtime fly by), the action is exciting, and glory be, it’s in the
original Japanese. Guess what, unlike the first film, this Gantz is
actually very funny. The adherence to the original dialog, subtitled
for our viewing, also conveys more about the characters in a far shorter
amount of time than was achieved in the first film. This time I
actually cared about what happened to these folks. There were only a
few moments where the audience had to depend on their recall of movie
one to grasp the nuances of movie two, but not so much that a new viewer
would be lost. There is less kitschy fantasy about the film; no
leek-loving aliens, no hyperactive boombox-playing UFO’s and the giant
Buddha is only seen in a tiny flashback. There are a lot less varieties
of Visitors this time around, drawing from a single pool of very creepy
humanoid ET’s with a serious grudge and even more serious fighting
skills. Most of the breakneck action comes from the actual breaking of
necks, or at least slicing thereof with many katana swords, which seem
to be the weapon of choice for this chapter, unlike the big
delayed-action laser guns all over the first film.
Do we get any
answers as to what Gantz is or why it really doesn’t embrace Will
Smith’s more congenial outer space relations? Nope. Do we really care?
Well, since it’s purported to be the sequel and likely final chapter,
some answers would’ve been nice, but I was so taken by the excellently
choreographed fight scenes and intrigued by the mystery of Kato and what
Kei would do about the last target, that I didn’t mind.
While
I was interested in the outcome of Kei’s adventure, I don’t think I was
nearly as involved as the audience surrounding me, which seemed to be
made of many, many fans of JPop star Kazunari Ninomiya, who returns to
the sequel as Kei Kurono. At various times, awww-ing and squeals could
be heard during scenes where the puberty-challenged Ninomiya’s avatar
sweetly, awkwardly courts the forthright Tae Kojima. Given, there were
some truly touching scenes, but the amount of sniffles filling Japan
Society would’ve convinced the Academy to just hand the Oscar over to
the Arashi singer immediately. The petite pop idol does really have
onscreen charm and puts over boy-next-door klutziness even while he’s
improbably slicing and dicing black blooded aliens in the middle of the
Tokyo subways and leaping over buildings in a single bound thanks to the
Lite-Brite PVC catsuit.
There are some head-scratching returns of folks
dispatched in the first film, including one character I thought was
great and really well acted in the previous film, but will not spoil
here (Read our review and suss it out). These reappearances were
perplexing because many of the people brought back onscreen are only
around for a minute or two. I was likewise confused by the casting of
Takayuki Yamada, a rising star in Japan who spends most of the film as
the detective just missing his prey and looking frustrated. Nor is
Ken’ichi Matsuyama’s return as Kato much of a stretch for the actor who
has done far better things, but acquits himself well in the action
scenes, which really are the showstoppers. The script itself ranges
from intriguing in its moral lesson about what people will do to save
themselves or the ones they love, to amiably cheesy when that love is
put to the test. Still, no one is expecting a David Mamet film and
while a lot of the emotion may be as one-dimensional as the manga it’s
based on, the actors seem to give it a lot more this go round than the
last.
It’s a
pity only a small audience of viewers will see Gantz: Perfect Answer,
because it’s awfully entertaining, with characters written much more
likeably this time and far better pacing. With all its boomtastic
action and with the cast finally able to speak for themselves instead of
that awful dub, you’d have the recipe for a great blast of summer fun
that audiences worldwide would enjoy. Gantz: Perfect Answer may not be
a perfect film, but it is a perfectly good one and definitely miles
ahead of its predecessor.
~ The
Lady Miz Diva
July
11th, 2011
Gantz: Perfect Action North
American premiere is part of Japan Cuts 2011 at New York City’s Japan
Society, running from July 7th – 22nd, 2011.
Click here to see more of their excellent film lineup.
Click here to read our
review of the first film, Gantz.
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