Linbeymusol Wonderful character development!

Evengyny Thanks for the memories!

Tayloriona Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Kamila Bell This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Destroyer Wod OK , first of all i guess you want to know if the fighting is good right? Answer is yes... Its good. But do the movie has a lot of it? Not really. The few fights in the movie are well choreographed for sure, but the problem is with all the rest. This movie is nonsense from beginning to end. When the coffin is stolen from a monastery, a young monk which seem to be away at that time is given the task to take it back by the surviving member. He goes after "the coffin man" which the legend says a bunch of thing... for a warrior that just stole it, and eventually not only will he join force with him, but also with other characters you don't really understand much about.The movie is set in an unknown period... Well yeah it is, it seem to be the feudal Japanese era but they use guns and bazookas, and what we taught would be the main foe actually turned main protagonist eventually use a katana turned shotgun with unlimited ammo.... OKAY !!! I could past all these nonsense if the story was fun to follow and made sense, but it does NOT. You care so little about that bunch of characters. The only way the movie find to introduce them is to show them beating some random foes to make think there great fighters, but never do we bond with them at all. At some point what i tough was a main character died, and i just didn't give a damn about it.More the movie progress, more the story get confusing and at the end i was just waiting for it to end. It seem a bit like a manga on screen, maybe it will appeal to some people, but if you are looking for a good story and characters to root for.... well this is not it. Call me traditional, but i need a reason, something to get drawn to the main protagonist, and this movie had many of them(or i tough so) and none of them ended up appealing me at all... This movie is just a confusing mess, with a couple good fights thrown it, but too few of them to be noticeable.No matter how independent, how underground or how Japanese the movie is, its just not to my liking. They throw so much stuff on screen just for the sake of having it. For example main hero being bitten by vampires, only to bit them back and show how "supernatural he is" or when he pull out his katana turned shotgun only to kill the "zombies" that seem to not fall down to any hits... In the end all of this do not matter in the movie. Even the last fight, our hero get defeated by the goddess, she goes to heaven to slaughter angels... i think, and he rise up and some character say he is the hope... yeah but he just got defeated... whats the point. No really, i know Japanese can make good movies, but this is not one of them.

Maximus This film is a blast! I enjoyed it on many levels. From the past/futuristic time frame to the heavy metal soundtrack to the barroom brawlingesque fight sequences. For me this film really struck a chord and I found myself watching it again, twice, that same day(second time back to back, and later with a buddy). While not my favorite action flick it definitely ranks high.That being said, I will submit that though I really enjoyed it I can completely see why this film has garnered some less than positive reviews. Here are my views on these comments to help prevent someone who will love this movie from missing it due to bad press.PLOT: Yes it has a plot, but as the critics have pointed out, your left to imagine what it really is. The movie tells you that coffin bad, monk good, anti-hero childlike and selfish but power wells beneath; you have to fill in the blanks. This didn't bother me as much as it seems to have bothered others. I would have loved it to have been as fleshed out as Lord of The Rings, but that's not the case. You can easily draw your own conclusions which make for an enjoyable viewing.ACTING: I have read a lot of comments online about Tak Sakaguchi as a one trick pony. He plays the bigger than life "anime" hero in all his roles. Well I say great! I don't watch action movies for the complex character interactions or to see the hero seethe with inner pain and angst. I wanna see a childish, fearless, happy-go-lucky dude with a one track mind and the endless skills to follow it. While the critics are right (at least about this film and Versus) that is a pro for me, not a con. I felt like I was reading a manga the entire time.FIGHT SEQUENCES: Finally, I will address the fighting. It is lacking the awe factor of super-human, circ de soleil like acrobatics and parkour of other Asian action flicks, but I think the style fit the story. While back flips and wall runs are visually appealing they serve little to no purpose in knockdown, drag out street fights. And that is what Grave(Tak)is; a skilled samurai with a childlike love of fighting. His moves are lighting fast and he is so at home in a battle it's enthralling. He fights with such enjoyment that I found myself smiling along with him when more enemies show up. The two best scenes which illustrate this are during the fight with "coffin bandits" in the woods. The first is when he runs with the fleeing marauders, attacking them as he passes, then, having out run them turns and runs back through the crowd. The second is a seen you rarely get to see in more "classy" action sequences. After having beat a bandit he turns to walk away and, having thought better of the idea, turns and proceeds to mercilessly pummel the poor shmuck. He evens trips in his excitement and falls on him after a miss placed kick and continues to beat him to a pulp(hilarious!)All in all it was a great movie. Did I learn something from it? No. Did it change my outlook on life? Uh-uh. Do I have a new found respect for something or realize something profound that had been right under my nose all the time? Nope. But it is a kick-a** slug fest in a surreal world with characters that seem so familiar to anyone who enjoys anime and manga, and that is what it was meant to be; an hour and a half adrenaline pulsing action film.-MAXIMUS

Deem This film had the ingredients to be great--both the fight director and the main star of Versus, which I love--but they made a totally forgettable movie. The villains were uninteresting, the characters were one dimensional, and all the cool concepts weren't executed well at all. For instance, there was a bad guy in the beginning with a huge sword like Cloud's in FF7. He died almost immediately after swinging it around a few times.The director and star were so pretentious in the Making Of documentary. "Period dramas are a staple of Japanese cinema, so we decided to do something completely different with it, to reinvent it and create a type of action never seen before!" The costumes were all weird, Gothic, and in some cases, almost futuristic. I thought this had potential since it was really stylized. I had my doubts about the heat seeking missile from a samurai's rocket launcher, but it was the motorcycle that ruined it for me. Cause if there's one thing that period pieces are lacking in, it's motorcycles. They put some chains on it, which did nothing. Anachronisms can work wonderfully in historical fantasy, but this time it was plainly obvious that the filmmakers were trying desperately to be cool and failing.My biggest problem was the fight choreography, especially after seeing it executed so well in Versus. The star, Tak Sakaguchi, is a fighter in real life who was brawling in the streets before Ryuhei Kitamura found him and cast him in Versus. No wonder he's a good stuntman! In this film, he decided to come up with "a new type of action never seen before!" The underlying principle of this amazing revolution of action cinema? Actually hitting people. That's his idea, his contribution to stuntwork. First of all, it's common practice in Hong Kong cinema where contact is required, and they usually use shields under their clothing. So his "innovation" is nothing new. Does this "new kind of action" add anything to the film? Not at all. For one, I didn't even notice he was actually hitting people. The difference was imperceptible. Here's the stupid part--it actually looked worse. Rather than choreograph something really cool like an exchange of blocks, dodges, punches, and kicks with maybe some acrobatics, his "revolutionary new technique" consisted of him just doing rapid fire punches to the torsos of the poor stuntmen who had to work with him. The sword work was the same back and forth swings little kids do when they play sword fight. I'm not kidding. Almost all of the fight scenes consisted of one hit kills on disposable bad guys with the same back and forth motion. No variation. No high and low. No fancy spins. Just back and forth. They used wire work and occasional camera tricks to spice it up, but many of the sequences were done in long shot, which made it glaringly obvious that a circle of opponents was approaching one at a time to be punched ten times in the chest in real life, then die. At least cover that stuff up with close ups and editing.Additionally, the plot was incoherent. I kept expecting a moment where all would be revealed, but it never came. It's not even symbolic or profound. The star himself said, "When I read the fourth draft, I thought that it was absolute crap! So thought I would save it with my acting." (This was the fourth draft?! Oh my God!) And his efforts didn't work. Especially since he plays the same character in every movie: the anime badass who is annoyed all the time and says "Urusei!" to everybody. I think the best part, action-wise was when they had a capoeira guy do some cool inverted kicks and handstands and flips. Then he was dispatched by the actor punching him in real life.The only thing that roped me in when I started watching was the production design. All of the costumes and props showed great potential for something really interesting and original, then failed to deliver on that promise. And I didn't know the "zombie" enemies were even zombies until they were called that in the documentary. They didn't look like zombies at all; they were just moaning people dressed all in black with silly hoods over their heads. I don't mean that to be dismissive of their costumes--their hoods were quite silly by hood standards; they resembled a jester's hat.Fans of a good Gothic fantasy set in ancient Japan will be disappointed since the filmmakers only implied a plot without coming up with one. Last time I checked, the movie in which Tak Sakaguchi played a battle-loving badass who had a hidden reserve of power foreshadowed throughout the film only to be revealed at the climax was called Versus. After five years, the best they can come up with is Versus minus the story and fight choreography set in a different time period. I hope they're proud. Action connoisseurs will be very disappointed since the fight choreography is uninteresting and repetitive 90% of the time. It's sad when the best fight scene in the film is the one with the gun, and not the hand to hand exchanges or swordfights. If you're not picky about violence and just want to see an actor beat stuntmen uninterestingly, then this film is for you.Frankly, I felt betrayed.

EVOL666 I picked this one up after seeing the trailers for it (which looked pretty damn cool) and I will say it was better than I thought it would be. Lots of kick-ass fight scenes based around a decent but somewhat hollow storyline - DEATH TRANCE is pure chop-socky entertainment.Grave (Tak Sakaguchi of VERSUS fame) has stolen a sacred coffin that it is rumored will grant the "owner" anything that they wish for. This is obviously a hot-commodity for others who would also like to partake of the coffin's secrets - and the entire film is basically about Grave trying to protect his new acquisition from rival kung-fu kickers...Basically - the whole plot for DEATH TRANCE is just a set up to show a bunch of super-stylish and awesome fight scenes - honestly - that's fine with me for this sort of thing. There's never a dull moment in the film and martial-arts fans will probably get a boner over this one. It has a VERSUS-like feel to it - but I honestly dug DEATH TRANCE a little more than VERSUS. Non-stop ass-kicking action, worth a look to Asian-action fans...8.5/10