No meaning, no sense, no redeeming features whatsoever, VERSUS is best described by its director as: NON-STOP, FREE-FALL ULTRAVIOLENCE ACTION ENTERTAINMENT! This is the hard-knuckled cinematic cocktail that launched director Kitamura to international celebrity after years in the no-budget trenches and kick-started the careers of co-writer Yudai Yamaguchi and its star and action choreographer, Tak Sakaguchi. The ingredients: five Yakuza thugs, two escaped convicts, one evil wizard, and a forest full of gun-toting zombies. Mix with gasoline and serve. High on style, low on budget, delivering non-stop, blood-spurting fun, it's Raimi's EVIL DEAD for a new millennium. Prisoner KSG-301 escapes while handcuffed to a severed arm. A fashion-forward yakuza gang is supposed to get him to safety, but they insist on hanging out and waiting for the boss, passing the time by tormenting a random female hostage. Our hero tells them to stop, they won't, there's a short, sharp eruption of violence and the yakuza dies.
Movie over? Not quite. See, this is a magic forest, and the recently deceased yakuza come back to life, and KSG-301 and the hostage make a run for it, with a growing army of kung fu kicking zombies on their tails. Proving just how far a determined director with a simple goal, a shameless cast, and some cool ideas for new ways to kill zombies can go, VERSUS has nothing on its mind but pure cinematic anarchy. Irredeemable, inexcusable, indefensible - but undeniably fun!
1 min 53 sec
Views
14,628
Posted On
September 02, 2011
Ryûhei Kitamura
Writer
Ryûhei Kitamura
Studio
Independent
Release
April 12, 2002
Chieko Misaka
Hideo Sakaki
Tak Sakaguchi
No Music Available