Gamera 2: Region shurai

This movie rocks! Gamera gets a serious facelift for this feature, with a sleek new look and a bad attitude. No longer is he a hero just for the kiddies, but a serious threat to anything that gets in his way. The film looks great, has high production values, state of the art special effects, a killer music score, a tough no-nonsense attitude, and massive large scale destruction. Monster movie fans are sure to be thrilled. Even without the benefit of subtitles I found the film to be riveting from start to finish. Highly recommended.

I must say, I picked this one up expecting it to be just another Japanese rubber suit monster movie and thought it might be a bit of a laugh in that 'so bad its good' type of way. I was surprised however to find a very decent film which kept me engaged from the beginning, with a logical and 'plausible' storyline (if you can suspend disbelief when it comes to pre-historic flying turtles stomping their way through miniature cities etc.) and a decent script. The special effects are also pretty good, even though the main protagonists are of the 'men in rubber suits' variety. The only problem is, I'm now going to have to go and hunt down the other 2 installments! I've watched many worse Hollywood films recently and would recommend this to anyone who likes a good 'creature feature'.

The second part of the Gamera trilogy is a very enjoyable movie! On one hand, it successfully imports the trademarks of the 70s (focussing more on the monster battle than on the human characters), but stylistically it is up-to-date for the 90s with its fast editing, cutting to photos and different locations all the time - that provides the bizarre action (come on, a turtle with jet engines?) with a realistic CNN report look. The 100 speedy minutes feel like 80. Gamera battles a giant crab (similar to actual giant crabs of the Pacific Ocean) and a swarm of smaller monsters here which may break out of the ground any moment - pretty effective compared to the monsters of old days who used to walk across the country so you could see them coming from miles away. When Gamera is covered by thousand of small creatures, the agony is almost tangible. Also, this time we have not much treachery, wickedness, ignorance or controversy among the humans - they all agree Gamera is the one who deserves support and it's a well organized co-operation this time.

The second part of the new gamera-series offers the same advantages of the first movie only with improved quality. The design of legion is well done offering a mean, foreign but interesting looking villain that threatens earth (especially Japanese cities :) The story is convincing, revealing the nature of legion step by step (meaning the film is very interesting even if there are humans instead of monsters on screen, which is, in my opinion is very important to a film based on special effects).

An amazingly well done film you'll surely want to watch more than only one time.

For years now, all I've had was the original Japanese language version, without subtitles, thinking this is the best giant monster film to ever come along. Now, after seeing it subtitled, I believe it's easily the best of the 3 new Gamera films. The situations involving people, are well integrated with the story, and kept in proximity to the action. Legion, the giant insect-like crustacean, is the best monster ever to come out of Japan. It's also one of the most articulated creatures ever designed. The icing on the eiga, is the great CGI effects, like the animated lasers Legion emits, and Gamera's fire-balls. Suspension of disbelief is not a problem. The most amazing thing is, that they were able to take what was ludicrous camp in the extreme, and succeeded in making it respectable art. You'll believe a giant prehistoric saber-toothed fire-breathing turtle, CAN fly !