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Kamui
Kamui (Ken’ichi Matsuyama) is a powerful, young
ninja, who walks away from his life of violence and murder. The only
problem is, once you’re a ninja, leaving is impossible, so Kamui becomes
a fugitive ninja, on the run, hunted by his former clan. While on the
run, his travels bring him to a seashore village where he meets
fisherman; Hanbei (Kaoru Kobayashi), who Kamui befriends. Life begins to
settle for Kamui, until his violent past comes back to catch up with
him.
Kamui isn’t the fully
rounded and filled story that we’d be interested in. It’s a flashy
little movie, with bland acting, terrible, clunky CGI, an empty story,
but a film that is very beautifully shot. Ken’ichi Matsuyama gives a
moody performance as the life hardened ninja; Kamui, but he looks more
of a pretty, tween heart throb, who’s more likely to be found in a
teenage soap than playing the most skilled ninja killer around. Kaoru
Kobayashi gives us an, at first, annoying performance, but shows a
little more depth and seriousness in some of his more dramatic scenes,
which is a plus in his and the films favour. But the single most
appealing and charismatic character in the film is Hideaki Ito as the
pirate captain; Kudo. His charisma claws back some of the ground lost by
the film, but it isn’t enough to save it completely.
Okay, so this is a ninja flick. So you’re wondering;
what about all the fight scenes? Surely there must be some hella sweet
ninja action in this film? Well, yes there is, but, they’re not the
greatest looking scenes of ninja prowess. Kamui has a number of secret
ninja techniques, one which is pretty much a pile driver, driving an
opponents head into the ground from incredibly ridiculous heights,
killing them, while he floats away completely unscathed. Wirework also
looks great, if done well, but having a ninja jump a distance that’s
clearly impossible, but they float to the ground, like a falling
feather, landing gracefully. Ninja are supposed to be over the top, but
this is just a little step too far off the scale and ends up just being
plain ridiculous. The CGI also is very clunky and not done to a high
standard. I assume this was probably due to budget constraints, but
these scenes can be picked from a hundred miles away and takes you out
the film for being far too obvious.
The plus side of the film and probably it’s only
saving grace are the beautiful photography of the film, with the lushest
green forests you’ve ever seen, beautiful seaside villages and the
longest and deepest blue oceans that really give the film a great
anchor. Hey, it may not be a winner in the story, character or CG
department, but I’ll be damned if the scenery doesn’t look good! The
fight scenes, though over-the-top and silly, are fairly interesting to
watch. But what do we expect, really? It’s based on a manga.
The only extra available on the disc is the films
theatrical trailer.
Kamui
isn’t the perfect ninja film, but it’s got some good fight scenes, a few
interesting characters, great looking locations, but it’s held back by
poor characterization, pacing and bad CGI. It’s like watching a live
action anime. A not so good, live action anime. |
