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Casshern
R1 - America - Dreamworks Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Noor Razzak (30th October 2007). |
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The Film
 For first time director Kazuaki Kiriya "Casshern" is a rather ambitious and technically complicated film, even for a seasoned filmmaker the amount of special effects, stunt work and intricately choreographed action sequences can be difficult to orchestrate, but Kiriya seems to have a handle on those aspects, and it's a little sad that the story itself that had to suffer because of this. "Casshern" takes place within an alternate history. In recent times warfare has spread throughout Eurasia, and has devastated the continent, but has finally come to an end leaving many casualties. Geneticist Dr. Azuma's (Akira Terao) son Tetsuya Azuma (Yusuke Iseya) was one of those casualties. Driven by the love for his fallen son, he attempts to gain government sponsorship for his controversial neo-cell treatment, in which he claims will regenerate humankind. However, the doctor's treatment is turned down. But this minor roadblock is not enough to stop him from reaching his goals and continues to complete his work by accepting an offer from an evil military faction. During one of the experiments, an accident in the lab creates a race of mutants with abnormal strength that suddenly wage war on humankind with the aim of eventual annihilation, but only one warrior stands in the way of that, Dr. Azuma's deceased son Tetsuya has been reincarnated as the warrior Casshern. It has been said before that the Americans are masters at action cinema, the Europeans are craftsmen at character development and the Japanese are excellent at creating atmosphere. In the case of "Casshern" I'd say that is undeniably true as writer/director Kazuaki Kiriya exports to you into his fantasy world of giant robots and crazy costumed fighters with characters that look and feel the part set amongst highly stylized imagery. It really does make you feel that this alternate history did at one time existed (within the context of the film that is, if you truly believe in this world you may like to seek professional help.) The expertly choreographed action speaks volumes it's both intense and cartoon-like at times, which makes it rather amusing to watch especially when the character Casshern is moving at incredible speeds. However at first glance at the film's synopsis you'd think you just read the plot of the latest Xbox or Playstation game, and you'd be half right although "Casshern" is most definitely a film it was made like most recent video games, shot almost entirely on blue or green screen stages and all the backgrounds are computer generated. It's simple and sometimes convenient plot unfortunately halts the film from making the leap from good film to excellent film, furthermore I also felt that "Casshern" seems to have a slight case of mistaken identity. It doesn't really know what it wants to be, the underlying tones of world annihilation that humankind will be the end of itself, this deep philosophical tone feels out of pace amidst a straight forward sci-fi action epic and brings the film's more exciting moments down a notch. Paramount/DreamWorks has released this film in it's 117 minute 'Director's Cut' length.
Video
Presented in it's original theatrical ratio of 2.35:1, this anamorphic widescreen transfer is decent enough however just falls short of impressing. Almost the entire film has been given the CGI treatment and filmed in digital so imperfections to the transfer could severely impair the enjoyment of the film. The transfer has it's moments of softness which occur as blurriness, however these may be artistic choices rather than actual source material flaws as it's used to establish that Casshern can travel quickly and move fast a blur effect is used occasionally, however there are some instances where sharpness is overlooked. The transfer is a little dark at times, and the blacks are a bit noisy with grain. The film's colors are striking and the filmmaker's have used a massive palette of bold color choices for the film. At times the colors can bleed mainly onto the skin tones which don't always look natural as they lean towards the orange-red hues.
Audio
Two audio tracks are included to choose from, a Japanese Dolby Digital EX 5.1 surround track and a Japanese Dolby Digital 2.0 surround track. For the purposes of this review I chose to view the film with its Japanese Dolby Digital 5.1 EX track. I've previously had a chance to look at an Asian release of this film which had a full bit-rat DTS ES 6.1 track that blew the roof. This EX number isn't as dynamic but will certainly do. The dialogue is clear and distortion free; the ambient atmospheric surrounds are plentiful and exercise excellent surround separation across all channels. The audio is totally immersive and puts you directly into this fantasy world additionally the music is rendered beautifully, the score is mixed well throughout each speaker and it's never too overbearing. Furthermore, the action scenes is where this track comes alive, flying debris, gun fire, explosions, giant robots marching, the clanging of swords all comes together in a crescendo of aural excitement. Fans of the film should be pleased with this soundtrack. The film also includes forced subtitles in English, and I found them to be quite good, there were no spelling mistakes that I could see and no grammatical errors and they are easy to read and don't disappear from the screen too quickly either.
Extras
The only extras Paramount has included on this release are bonus trailers for "Transformers" which runs for 2 minutes 2 seconds and "Next" which runs for 2 minutes 17 seconds.
Overall
I enjoyed "Casshern" for the action and effects; I wasn't convinced that molding a simple plot with deep-seeded philosophical undertones to be a particularly good move, this occasionally saw the ugly head of pretentiousness rear itself. I was a little surprised at the lack of substantial extras by Paramount, considering other releases around the world with substantial supplements.
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