Death Trance (2005)

An apocalyptic samurai, ninja, sci-fi western fantasy with characters that wouldn't look out of place in 'Soul Calibur', 'Mortal Kombat' and various other Japanese RPG videogames, that is how I can best describe this eye popping flick, odd title though.

The main star here is again the ultra cool Tak Sakaguchi, here in a kind of supernatural samurai mode as a mythic character who drags a coffin behind him everywhere he goes (and an odd little girl in your typical Japanese 'The Ring' spooky fashion) as he basically slaughters all who stand before him. His name is 'Grave' and he searches for the ultimate battle....rock on that!

This film is pretty similar to 'Versus' in the location (a forest), it stars Tak as some kind of super hero again and the fact the story is really quite bizarre and makes no real sense, plus it appears to be in a place and time that don't exist. So basically Tak has nicked the coffin from a temple and is taking it to a spot in the forest so it can grant him anything he wants...it seems the coffin can do this. Or does it? a monk is also after Tak and the coffin to stop it being opened and releasing the Goddess of destruction who will kick start an apocalypse...that's not a good thing. The monk is aided by...wait for it...Steven Seagal Jr. yep that's right, or his real name Kentaro Seagal (sounds like a 'Mortal Kombat' character), all of them battle bandits and non human creatures to reach their respective goals.

The film is fast and furious with fights breaking out all over the show and many of them being...well kinda average actually. Most seem too frantic and you can see the hits aren't making contact, also to be honest Tak isn't really a well built guy, he's cool but he doesn't really come across as tough and never really looks like he could really be whipping hordes of bad guys endlessly.

The look of the film is really what sets this apart, all the costumes are a kind of cross between traditional Japanese period wear with 'Mad Max', 'Water World', 'Conan', 'Krull' and many other fantasy type films throw in, it all looks highly stylish. Add to this a complete 'Army of Darkness' approach to the dark humour, camera work, extreme supernatural entities and wickedly evil looking weapons which do also include a kind of samurai 'boomstick' hehe.

Put it this way, the director of this film is Yuji Shimomura and he was the action director for 'Versus' (eh eh...you see, you see I came full circle there) and 'Devil May Cry 3' so I think you can get the gist of what I'm trying to explain here, the film is pretty much an explosive visual videogame. Its probably better than 'Versus' in my personal view as I reeeally didn't follow that a tall haha this is easier to follow plus it looks ace. I dunno why but the Japanese are just good at this kind of stuff, had this been a Hollywood flick with the usual overpaid names it would have been trash.