Azumi

Azumi is a pretty Japanese girl that can kill 200 hundred soldiers. Who doesn't want to watch that?

This movie is based on a Japanese manga of the same name by Yu Koyama. Ryuhei Kitamura, who also made Versus, is the producer. Aya Ueto stars as Azumi.

Azumi is one of 10 teenagers who have been taken in by a martial arts expert and war veteran. When she was a small girl, Azumi was found crying next to her dead mother's body after the war. She joins the old martial arts expert and is trained to become an assassin.

One day, the martial arts expert tells the 10 teens to pair up with their best friend. Then, he tells them to kill each other. Azumi kills her childhood friend with her sword. Then, there's only five of them left. Apparently, they have to do this for graduation. That's a school I wouldn't want to go to. Only half of them graduate. They have to prepare themselves to become coldhearted assassins in order to complete the difficult mission they have ahead of them.

The old master tells them that they need to kill 3 Samurai warlords from gaining control of Japan. On their journey to assassinating them, the five young killers encounter a lot of weirdos and the group starts getting killed off.

There's a lot of swordfighting, but it was thoroughly unconvincing. You can tell that the fighters were just acting. The swordfighting choreography was bad. They just spun around pretending that they got slashed by a sword, but you couldn't see any impact. You don't really see any sword contact on people's bodies, and when you do, you can tell that it was really light.

There's this psychopath that reminded me a little of Sephiroth from Final Fantasy 7. He looked very feminine wearing white robes. He had blush on and carried a red rose all the time. He's a master swordfighter, despite his appearance. Even when he kills tons of people with his sword, he gets no blood on his white robe. He must have really good stain resistant fabric on.

There was some Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon action in the movie, when some of the characters jumped really high up and down cliffs and buildings.

There was some stupid wacky sound effects sometimes.

The 10 assassins just looked like a bunch of goofballs. They didn't really look like good swordsmen. The battles just looked like kids pretending to have swordfights. The fighting and killing just didn't look real. The movie was a big dissappointment.

The only good scene was the last battle, where Azumi battles 200 guys. It made Kill Bill look pale in comparison.

The movie was artistically made. But, there were some parts that were just silly and goofy.

They also used never before seen camera angles. They used a technique to spin the camera 360 degrees from top to bottom. That was cool to watch.

In the end, Azumi chops off the guy in white's head off. She does it so quickly that the guy doesn't even know she sliced through his head until it falls off.

Azumi kills off the last samurai warlord by flying into the boat and slashing him. She then jumps into the water and swims away. She goes to make the sequel, Azumi 2, and a Playstation 2 videogame.

The Highs: Azumi is a very pretty delicate flower that is also lethal with her killing powers. Artistically made. Decent battle with 200 soldiers.

The Lows: Swordfighting didn't look real, and that was the main part of the movie.

The Verdict: A Japanese B movie Kill Bill.

My rating: D, 67.