This film blew my mind when I first saw it, as it was unlike anything I had ever seen. This combined genres I never thought I would see combined, Wuxia martial arts action and a zombie film with old fashion John Woo gun fights to boot. It has off the wall characters and a story that doesn’t really matter, and certainly doesn’t make that much sense, but it is just there for the action. Now watching it this time, and with my editors eyes I must say the film does drag a bit. It could easily have been significantly cut down without losing anything, like the 2 police characters that are totally pointless and superfluous, and aren’t as funny as the filmmakers seem to think. And some of the stuff with the Yakuza just drags on and really is not needed. Still an enjoyable film, and I love the shooting style (all moving cameras with canted angles) and the hyper kinetic action that takes this film totally over the top. One interesting note is that I don’t think they had any real guns, as the barrel flashes seem totally weird, and the automatic beretta one of the Yakuza is carrying bears a striking resemblance to my japanese airsoft pistol of the same make.

I have read that in Japan they went back extra action years later for a special edition, and added 10 minutes to the end of more action and gore. I would love to see it, but wouldn’t really want to see the film at 2 hours and 10 minutes! Ha, still would like to see it.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…

It seems spread across the world are 666 portals to the other side, and specifically in Japan is a number 444 the Forrest of Resurrection. We see a samurai fighting his way through a bunch of zombie samurais (talk about genre bending) but he is then executed by a warrior played by Arai Yuichiro, but he is then confronted by another warrior played by Sakaguchi Tak, and we leave off on this to come back later.

We cut to the present day and Sakaguchi Tak is an escaped convict number KSC2-303 along with another man, and they meet up with some idiot yakuzas, who have also kidnapped a woman played by Misaka Chieko. Sakaguchi doesn’t like it, so he kills on of the Yakuza, though the Yakuza quickly comes back as a zombie, and manages to escape with Misaka who slowly is getting her memory back. The Yakuza come into the woods, and try and kill Tak, though their boss has ordered them not too, but the bodies they have buried in the woods have come back as Zombies, and zombies that can still use the guns they were buried with, though not very well (a cool twist to the Zombie action). Eventually the boss played by Arai Yuichiro shows up, and is double crossed by a knife wielding gangster, but he proves himself inhuman and kills the yakuza and brings them back as undead warriors. Arai then manages to kill Sakaguchi, but he is brought back by the special blood of Misaka and the forrest but she is kidnapped by Arai. Then we see what happened in ancient times.

Sakaguchi was protecting his woman Misaka, but he couldn’t beat all the warriors so instead of letting them use her blood, he killed her and then was killed, and now he comes back and with his samurai sword with rubber grip and finger hole. ANd it is time for the showdown with swords and sword energy. Sakaguchi manages to win and leave with Misaka, and we cut to 99 years later, and Sakaguchi has destroyed the world and Arai is there to confront him, with Misaka saying she joined the wrong side, and went with the wrong brother.

The story is ridiculous and almost not there, but the action is top notch. The documentaries even show Sakaguchi fighting a Yakuza with real knives. The action is top notch and bad ass.

The DVD itself doesn’t have the best quality, the colors are muted and the picture could certainly be sharper, but the film is certainly worth seeing.