Howaitoauto

This movie is a very entertaining mixture of "Die Hard", "Cliffhanger", "The Fugitive" and "The great silence" with a little touch of Asian culture, a very emotional background and a couple of smart little twists in the ending.

Even though this movie copies from some of the mentioned originals and hasn't the usual uniqueness and creativity of the Asian cinema, this flick is high paced and entertaining as well as addicting from the beginning to the end so that it should please to any fan of action thrillers. I must admit that I prefer this professional and energetic Japanese movie to the endless follow ups of many of the more and more repetitive and faceless originals or trendy remakes. Even more conservative fans of solid suspense movies should adore this movie that takes some bits and pieces from the best examples to fusion it to an own explosive movie.

The three best elements of the movie are first of all the stunning Japanese winter landscapes, the great development of the credible main characters from a mourning coward to a responsible saviour and the high paced, surprising and in the end very emotional closing scenes.

If you happen to like the mentioned movies, make sure to check this one out as it is one of the best of its kind from the last decade and worth to be purchased.

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).

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. ;-)

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.

Though this was very obviously influenced by those two above movies, I didn't mind that fact - after all, it's a very entertaining formula. To it's credit, it does bring some originality to the formula - the hero is more an ordinary joe instead of some pseudo-commando, and the reason for his fighting is actually so he can redeem himself, instead of just being the standard "it's the right thing to do." As well, the movie is shot on location in some very eye-catching locations.

Unfortunately, that's about all that's positive that I can say about this movie. Though this was big-budget for a Japanese movie, the polish of the movie is very inconsistant - it often looks cheaper and cheesier than many direct-to-video actioners. The action sequences aren't that plentiful and elaborate for the most part, and they are often directed in the most boring way possible - a lot of simply pointing and shooting the camera. There's no feeling of tension or excitement in or around those action sequences. And you can't help but feel the frustration of the hero slogging through the snow, since the dull tone (even the characters act bored) and the running time going on MUCH past its point of welcome. And despite the overlength, there are some awkward jumps in the narrative that make it appear that some scenes are missing, or were never filmed in the first place.