Raetsonwe Redundant and unnecessary.

ChanFamous I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Kimball Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Leofwine_draca CRYING FREEMAN is an okay martial arts flick based on a popular manga comic. Of course, I don't know anything about Japanese manga so I only have the film to go on and can't compare the two, but this is pretty much par for the course for a mid-'90s thriller: it has plenty of stylished action, a storyline involving rival gangsters battling it out, and a romance between the two leads. I enjoyed it, but it's not the rip-roaring action classic I wanted it to be, and I ended up enjoying 1995's other live-action manga adaptation, FIST OF THE NORTH STAR, a lot more.My main problem with CRYING FREEMAN is the action scenes. I wanted to enjoy these, and I thought I would because Mark Dacascos is a fine martial artist; just take a look at the athleticism and fluidity he manages in his fights in DRIVE and you'll see what I mean. Despite the presence of Dacascos in this movie, the action is nothing to get excited about. It's all hyper-stylised a la John Woo and just feels 'blah blah' to me; you see Dacascos leaping through the air with explosions behind him gunning someone down once, you've seen it a hundred times. If I think about an exciting gun action film I think HARD-BOILED, and this movie is no HARD-BOILED. When the action is slowed down here, I just get bored.Still, it has a mildly interesting storyline and some not-bad acting, including the guy playing a tough Japanese mob boss, brief turns from veteran star Mako (CONAN THE BARBARIAN) and COMMANDO actress Rae Dawn Chong and rent-a-nasty-Frenchman Tcheky Karyo doing what he does best. Leads Dacascos and Julie Condra ended up getting married in real life after this, so there's definite chemistry between the two of them, as well as some cool battles towards the end to enjoy. The problem is that the next film that director Christophe Gans and Dacascos made together was 2001's BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF, which still stands as a mini masterpiece, and this just another in a long line of dated '90s action flicks.

craig-884 I keep seeing this movie compared to anime or martial arts movies, and while I can see its roots in both genres, Crying Freeman is not really either. It might be a genre to itself.Years ago I read a book named "The Painted Bird" that I thought deserved to be taught as a classic because its clean, spare style deserved study. But what really set it apart for me was that it was permeated with violence - it was about WWII and life under the brutal rule of Nazi invaders - but its treatment was so spare and clean it somehow rose above its subject matter into the mythic and poetic.That's how this movie struck me. It is violent without being blood-soaked, has some highly charged eroticism without sinking into porn, and says more with the star's silence than could ever be told with dialog. The filming style is as spare and beautiful as I remember the text in "The Painted Bird" and can't be separated from the overall mythic impact of the movie.I'm not saying this is a world-changing movie. It didn't give me some sort of epiphany, and at my age I'm no big fan of martial arts movies or anime cartoons. I'm just saying there is something quite beautiful about the way this movie fits together that elevates it above a subject matter that could have been cheapened into a spatter flick or bloated into a pure CG actioner. It's worth watching if only to sink your mind into the elusive, mythic quality that sets this movie apart.

geckokid-1 This movie started out quite nicely, until the Chinese started speaking. It couldn't stop me laughing since then. The realisticity was completely broken when what the Chinese Mafia/secret society speak is Cantonese, which only people in Guangdong, Macau and Hong Kong speaks. But none of those places were featured in the movie. Additionally the Cantonese dialogues are really cheesy, and the stereotype of Asians being chain-smokers just annoys me. The same language problem happened to the Flight of the Phoenix where the locals were speaking Cantonese. There are way too many explosions, especially considering what caused them. The set where the main character was taken was poorly made too. I wouldn't recommend this movie if you can understand Mandarin or Cantonese, as it would be a laughing joke for you, like it did for me.

dbborroughs I've read the manga and seen the anime. I've now seen the live action film and like the earlier versions of the story I was entertained but not overly so.The plot of the movie has a girl witnessing the assassin known as the Crying Freeman killing several targets. (He's so named because he sheds a tear for each person he kills). She flees the scene of the crimes, and then waits for him to find and kill her. He does find her, but he does not kill her. They end up together. This turn of events along with a power void at he top of yakuza brings about a series of bloody clashes.A workman like production, this is a good little thriller that's not particularly special. It plays in many ways like a supped up TV movie, having the feel of a production that was made with an eye on every market in the world. Its a movie that will entertain you but won't stay with you very long after you've seen it.Honestly this version of the story made the least impression of all on me and I had to sit and think a while to try to remember, if indeed I really saw this movie or not.Certainly not a bad movie, its more middle of the pack. Its the type of thing that will entertain you while its on but won't really hang around in your head for very long after you've finished watching it. If you run across it on TV its worth trying.To be honest the worst thing that I can say about it is even though the actor playing our hero has no presence its still an enjoyable time waster.