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Review : Returner DVD
I am not happy with the art for today's comic so I am going to re-do it and I should have it posted before midnight. Friday's comic is still on time but today's comic will be a bit late.
So I am going to review a very cool Japanese movie that you might be able to find at cooler video stores called Returner. This is a medium budget Japanese sci-fi action movie that has pretty slick digital effects and a watchable but slightly campy plot line.
The plot outline has shades of The Terminator in that the future of humanity has been wiped out with a war with an alien species and a young woman named Milly ( Anne Suzuki )was sent back in time in order to change events to prevent the war. It ends up that a small alien space craft has crash landed and was taken by the Japanese government. It ends up the bad guy in the movie is a Japanese branch head of the Hong Kong Triads played by Goro Kishitani who finds out about the captured alien being and the slightly damages flying saucer. He takes over the government lab with his own personal army.
Milly has enlisted the help of our hero a trenchcoat-clad bounty hunter ( Takeshi Kaneshiro ) who looks like a Japanese Johnny Dep. Our hero has a bone to pick with the mob boss stemming from the time that the mob boss sold our hero's best friend's organs to the black market. Our hero has a hard time believing Milly but she convinces him to help by attaching a micro-explosive charge to his neck. She is also armed with a time distortion doohickey that can make the user twenty times faster than normal. This slows down our hero to super-duper slow motion and he can shoot a whole room full of bad guys before they even pull out their guns.
This is not a deep intellectual movie but it is a damn fine pop-corn and Sapporo Beer flick. There are very minor plot holes regarding time travel but it does not suck like Terminator 3. This movie is sort of what Terminator 3 should have been like. One of the very cool thing about this movie is that it does not fall into the tired cliché of having the hero and the heroine fall in love when they are trying to save the world.
The action is pretty cool and well done. The production value is pretty good for a non-Hollywood sci-fi movie and the flick looks damn good on DVD. The DVD has the original Japanese/Cantonese/Bad-English language tracks but the English dubbed track is passable for those of you who have girl friends who do not like to watch foreign movies with subtitles.
I know it is sort of hard to believe but the Japanese film industry does make cool non-Godzilla and Anime movies and Returner is defiantly one of them. It is a fine sci-fi action movie that does not star the Governor of California.
Jake at July 21, 2004 
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Comments
Is the action great and smart? I like great, smart action. Preferably more great than smart.
Posted by: BBQ at July 21, 2004 12:20 AM
Well they did quote that fat fuck from AintItCool News
Posted by: Jake of 8bitjoystick.com at July 21, 2004 8:26 AM
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Posted by: hossam at July 22, 2004 1:03 AM
Posted by: Jake of 8bitjoystick.com at July 22, 2004 1:23 AM
I liked the movie. It's very GUNDAM WING!
The movie is very stylish, very japanese and presents you with nice artwork.
Buy or rent?
RENT IT, it's a interesting movie but nothing that you must own on dvd.
Posted by: Jim at July 23, 2004 11:09 AM
