White Heat

This is an astounding action movie. Similar to Die Hard, but in some ways better (if you like Japan films). The lead character is more likable, for one thing. He is just an ordinary guy- not heroic nor an ex-cop. He gets injured and is placed in an extraordinary situation- as a lone fighter against a ruthless gang of terrorists who have seized HIS dam. The only things he has going for him are his intricate knowledge of the dam, plus a deep-seated fear of not being a coward (as he was misunderstood during a past failed rescue where his co-worker froze to death). This combination brings out a desperation that drives him beyond his pain and beyond his normal abilities. The terrorists are lead by a genius who has everything well planned, his gang is loaded with big guns, and the odds are overwhelming against the dam worker turned hero. This is a real classic action movie- one of the best ever made (if you like Japan films).

Efficient 'terrorists take over a building' thriller from Japan.

The building in this case is the largest dam in Japan, high in the mountains. A terrorist group seize control of the facility, threatening to open the dam and flood the surrounding countryside if they aren't given a suitably huge wedge of cash.

The spanner in the works is Togashi (Yuji Oda), an earnest employee who finds himself hip deep in randomly coiffured baddies.

Yes, there are big slabs of 'Cliffhanger' and 'Die Hard' here, and the flick outstays it's welcome by at least twenty minutes. However, this is a good solid thriller, buoyed in no small part by Togashi being an everyman rather than a typical action hero. He thinks on his feet and dispatches the terrorists in some neat ways, but at no point devolves into a dead-panning stereotype. In fact, his actions are in recompense for being unable to save the life of his best friend during a mountaintop snowstorm, several months previous. His friend's fiancé Chiaki (Nanako Matsushima) is visiting the dam and becomes one of the hostages, and she firmly believes Togashi will simply escape rather than help them. But Togashi has a debt to pay to his friend, and he'll do whatever it takes to save Chiaki!

Oda is a believable and spirited hero, and Matsushima a lovely and talented actress. The chief villain, mad haired and wheelchair-bound, is also good fun. The secondary characters, especially the cops, overact to a ridiculous degree, so much so that their scenes are almost comical. If this was deliberate, I didn't get what they were referencing or paying homage to.

The Ocean Shores DVD offers good, if unspectacular picture quality, and subtitles that are mostly fine.

And in Japanese. The narrative structure is the same as the Bruce Willis movie, right down to the terrorist's duplicitous motive, the presence of a girlfriend within the dam, and an unhelpful outside police force. It's an entertaining movie, with some excellent action sequences involving snow, tunnels full of water, and enough thrills to satisfy action fans.

Togashi and his friend leave their post at the Okutowa Dam to go rescue two lost climbers in a blizzard. The situation turns worse and Togashi heads back to get help. In the storm his friend dies saving one of the climbers and Togahi is left with guilt. Not long afterward, during another storm, a group of terrorists take over the damn threatening to blow it up. Togashi is outside the Dam when the attack comes so he's the only one who has a chance to save the hostages including the fiancée of his deceased friend.

This is one of those movies that you want to be better than it is. Its not bad but its not quite a slam bang action film like the Die Hard movies, which, unfortunately, is what it closely resembles. The problem with this film is that its very talky. This is, I suppose, in keeping closer to the way a situation like this would go, but at the same time they put it together to seem to be a Die Hard like film so I expected a bit more. If you run across it and want to see a different sort of action film I'd give it a try.

This movie sucked. The acting sucked, the script sucked, and the movie overall sucked. There were two threads in the movie that were not developed and the viewer had to do a bit of work to figure out what was happening.

I'm not saying that it needs to be spelled out, but you suddenly find things happening and being said as if you have the slightest clue as to what they are. Examples:

The heroine's negative comments about the hero. The audience is never shown how she even knows anything about the guy and how he is tied into her fiance's death. The viewer has minimal exposure to the guy's death as well.

Also, all of a sudden there is a scene with a bunch of guys loading up and cocking machine guns and that is all you see before cutting back to the other scenes. No explanation what-so-ever about the guns and the folks with them.

We gave it a 3 because we didn't feel like we wanted our time back. It was fun to bad-mouth the movie while watching it, so it at least gave us a bit of entertainment. ;-)