Another enjoyable from Kitamura, though not one of his best works for sure. More of a popcorn movie, and not nearly as good as either VERSUS or AZUMI. It looks cool, and has some cool ideas, and some decent effects, though the fights really aren’t too impressive all around. This is based on another manga by Takahashi Tsutomu who also wrote the manga for ALIVE which Kitamura directed into a film as well. Actually I think this was also a TV series, and this kind of ended the TV series.

Actually it seems that Kitamura is getting worse and worse, but he is supposedly doing VERSUS 2 this year, and lets hope he gets back to his roots.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…

Tanihara Shosuke plays Detective Kanazaki Kohei who is so obsessed with a serial killer who has pulled the heart out of 3 young women, is late for his own wedding, and horribly his wife to be Mina (Shaku Yumiko who seems to be about the same here as she was when she first started in PRINCESS BLADE, and doesn’t seem to have gotten any better with a sword) is attacked while he waits at the alter and she walks to him with her heart already removed. She ends up at the Gate of Rage, where she is told she has 3 choices, to accept her death and be reborn, to haunt the earth forever as a ghost or to haunt her killer and kill him, but end up in hell forever. She has 12 days to decide, and goes and watches her fiancee, and keeping him from killing himself. Then a reporter played by Okamoto Aya (The star of AZUMI) is sent on her first big interview of the scientist Kudo (Takao Osawa) with the photographer played by Taguchi Hiromasa (the chubby guy from Shall we Dance?) who gets a picture of her, and when developed sees a man stealing her heart. He is able to take pictures of the afterlife, and did it with a plane, and a beautiful coroner brings the info to Kohei, and shows he can hear Mina. They go to save Aya, but she is already dead, and the photographer is almost killed, but they go to a woman who helped exercise the ghosts of the dead from the airplane he took a picture of. Kudo comes there, as it is the final place, and the place where the 6th women who served as the guardian of the Gate in a past life is, so he who has supernatural powers from the killings, and his comatose wife’s sister who does the actual killing, and who actually killed the current gate guardian (Shiina Eihi) so Mina has become the new Izuko. When they can’t kill the 6th girl, the sister pulls her own heart out to give it to Kudo, and the photographer kills him, letting him go to the gate, and call on the devil, who he wants to re-unite him with his wife (who Mina went to and told her what was happened and she went on and died).

Kudo fights Mina, but he is much better than here, and the Devil starts to come out of the gate, but Kohei has the Photographer murder him, and takes a blessed pistol, which lets him kill Kudo. He gives Mina her wedding ring, and she tells him she must live for her, because life is so precious.

Yes this film isn’t that great, but it is still fun, and Kitamura does make cool looking films, though this seems back to the lower budgets of his past. Not wonderful, but worth seeing if you are a fan of his films.