Gantz

Japanese movies were often innovative, groundbreaking, trend-setting, also for the western movie industry. This declined during the last 10 - 15 years, that may (towards I tend to believe) or may not caused by the growing occurrence of Anime movies, often Manga-based. Therefore, Asian quality movies are now coming more from other countries.

'Gantz' has its origins in a popular 'Seinen' Manga (for adults), which were in Japan also successful as Anime series. It starts up with a mystery. A few people are rematerialized in a room after their obvious death. The machinery responsible for their resurrection uses unimaginable technology, but orders them to fight against so-called 'Aliens', and to gain points like in an ordinary video-game. Confronted with their first mission the people react different, some of them are killed, but most of them are completely disturbed.

Until the first mission the movie is (from a western point of view) intriguing; effects and design ideas are announcing a decent mystery/sf experience, if the audience isn't aware of the Manga/Anime.

That lasts about 10, maybe 15 minutes, until one realizes, that any further impressing film experience will not happen. If you know the Manga or the Anime series, you know that the movie won't bring any deeper insights than disturbed people, hesitating to pull the trigger even when it goes for their (second) life, and Aliens mostly waiting for being destroyed between cheesy dialogs. Most of the Anime's sexual content and language is absent in the movie; but not the inexplicable behavior of the participants, both human or alien (or director/writer/producer).

Furthermore, there is no real mystery, as one, who is not familiar with the 'Gantz' Manga, may hope. It's simple simple simple. The machine is for playing the game, it's not something between the realms of death and life, it's no matter of Karma or God or the Devil. It's a machine built for a game, built by someone, and this someone isn't even a computer nerd version of an AVP predator. So, there is no revelation, no development. There isn't even a noticeable story anymore.

Between the fights the survivors are released to the real world, so they may continue their lost life, until they are transferred to the next mission, where new dead people arrive mostly to be killed because of their freezing despair (women) or dumbness (men). The real-life part of the characters between the missions is mostly lengthened and could have been cut with very little effect.

If someone would argue, that there are insights shown to the abysms of human behavior or the illness of the society, or something that goes one millimeter deeper than Video Game Shooting, I could not disagree more than to that. I would accept it for 'Gamer', but not 'Gantz'.

Overall, the movie could have been cut to some 75 min. length, and as a result it would be slightly entertaining for an audience with an IQ greater 70.

People who expect a decent Japanese movie, will be deeply disappointed. There is a CGI quality to mention, but asides from the flawed plot, there is too much overacting and screaming, to keep the level at least in the B class.

Thru their deaths by misfortune, various people are periodically recruited by a machine in the form of a dark sphere called "Gantz"(I'm guessing it's completely random since an old lady and a kid were also conscripted). At the center of all this are 3 young people: 2 guys and a girl. The 2 guys, Kel and Kato, have a history but hadn't seen each other in a while. Kel is at first timid, and even cowardly but later sees himself as heroic. Kato is intense and shudders and grimaces a lot (killed his father and went to juvie). The girl is a real cute "girly girl" who panics and runs away a lot. She's got the hots for Kato who doesn't notice or care cause he's too busy grimacing and thinking about other people.

A very decent movie with a nice concept but marred mainly by one annoying fact: Time and time again one of these people had an opportunity to shoot the threat and did not do it. Or did (eventually), but then instead of firing again, and again ----and again, if necessary, until said threat was demolished they just stood around with their mouth open wasting time until the threat recovered to attack again (Man, was that annoying!!!). If that won't get under your skin too much and you like sci-fi, I recommend this. Love, Boloxxxi.

This movie started out so good, it was almost criminal it turned out to be such completely unbelievable crap in the end.

The basic premise was good, for this kind of movie that is:

1. A bunch of guys die for several reasons.

2. The end up in a room with a mysterious black globe.

3. The globe gives them missions to kill UFOs residing in Japan. Hinting that they may redeem their lives this way.

4. They are given suitcases with black suits and cool sci-fi guns.

5. They are attacked by vicious UFOs.

So any person equipped with more than two brain cells would have:

1. Donned the suit.

2. Quickly checked out the weapon and got ready for the mission.

3. You wanna get your life back, right?

This far into the movie, I expected they would, I was eager for what was to come. This could be great!

Then they are magically "lasered" away to someplace in Tokyo and the UFO guy is not late to show up. Well not to spoil what happens too much, they are completely unprepared for the mission. And why?

1. They have completely failed to put on their cool black suits. OK, they girl has put it on. And looks good in it!

2. They have completely failed to check out their cool weapons.

Not to to spoil the movie, if there is anything to spoil, let me say this as a reality check:

1. If I knew I had died and had a chance to redeem my life by carrying out a mission, I would be sure to use any equipment given me.

2. If a monster was attacking me or my fellow undead, I would be sure to shoot first and ask questions later. Out of pure survival instinct.

3. If a monster was beating the crap out of one of my friends, then, even if I had no gun, I would do something to help out, lest I live in shame for the rest of my life.

4. If I was a hopeless nerd like most of the guys in the movie, and a cool beautiful girl showed interest in me, I would at least talk to her.

The guys in this movie, though, fail on all these basic point of normal behaviour. They are all prize-winning village idiots, almost autistic in their passiveness, hopelessly asocial towards the beautiful girls that seem to like these idiots, egoistic, craven individuals who can't use a weapon or even throw a stick at a monster in order to save their own or other people's lives. They lack the most basic survival instincts or humanity.

As a result, I spent most of the movie shouting "FOR THE LOVE GOD MAN, SHOOT, SHOOT, SHOOT!!"

I'm not a trigger-happy man in normal situations... But with vicious UFOs attacking me, come and get some! :-)

I'm a fan of the original anime, though I never got around to actually reading the manga. I loved the brutality and tragedy of the original anime, so this movie had quite a different feel to it overall.

I liked the changes they made to adapt the story to a movie. There was a lot of back story with the characters that had to be ignored or compressed, but when you're focusing on 2-3 characters in 2 hours, that is to be expected.

Overall I liked the special effects, the casting was pretty good, and although I'm not sure about the changes in the ending they made, i'm OK with what they've done to make this into an interesting sci-fi movie that is worth watching.

I did not read the manga, but I did watch the entire anime a few years back. The anime had 2 full seasons to tell the story, the movie had just two hours. So clearly while it is not as rich as the anime, the movie does a very good job given the time restriction.

I had no expectations when I started to watch it, however after 15 minutes I was a believer, and even if I didn't know the story, still a pretty decent movie. Very nice FX and a high quality production to it.

As fiction flicks goes, it is not for everybody, but If you like the theme and/or anime/manga culture, go for it for sure. And the sequel is already in the works, so we will get our Gantz fix soon enough.