Moon Child

I must admit - the only reason I bought this movie was because I am a big fan of Gackt and a *huge* fan of Hyde. I was expecting a good movie with a lot of shots that were, shall we say, pleasing to the feminine eye but a slightly cheesy story. I mean, the synopsis sounded really out there. And now that I have just finished watching it - I feel the need to tell the world of its brilliance! Hyde and Gackt both gave heart-wrenching performances, and my eyes are still hot from the crying that lasted throughout the last half of the movie. You get sucked into the story, and you really feel for the characters by the end. The element of vampirism - which I love, but is very easy to overdo or to ruin a movie with - is subtly mixed into the storyline as to make it something merely exotic, normal to this setting, rather than a random unnecessary addition to the story. I ranked it at a 9 out of 10 at first...and then I went back and tried to think of why I wasn't giving it that last point. Came up with nothing. So a ten out of ten it is. After all - I'm not much of a critic - the fact that I'm bothering to write a review at all means I either really hate the movie or really love it. You can tell what side I'm on with Moon Child.

MOON CHILD has a lot going for it. It's a visually stunning film to behold, but its story reeks of lack of originality. The movie is basically a retread of the Gangster genre, with a character on the rise, and his eventual fall, in the underworld. Throw a vampire into the mix to spice things up, and the film actually feels a bit more than generic, but alas its second half proves that it is, in fact, nothing more than a generic gangster movie.

As an action film, the movie fails badly. The director has a lot of money to throw around, so we get plenty of special effects and gunplay. There are, perhaps, TOO much gunplay. This is made doubly hard to stomach because the gunplay is so poorly filmed. John Woo this movie aint. If anything, MOON CHILD's gun battles look like the product of a director who wants stylized violence, but refuses to fully "go" with it. As a result, the film's non-action scenes play it up as realistic, but its action scenes reek as cartoonish.

Still, a visually impressive movie that just might be bothered by an unnecessarily long 15 extra minutes at the end and the old Asian use of heavy melodrama for no obvious purpose other to have melodrama.

6 out of 10

It may be possible that the cultural difference makes me rate it lower than I would, say, an American film, but really, what a long, boring, pretentious, often ridiculous film!

First you have the two protagonists, Japanese pop singers, both dyed blond, Gackt (please attempt to ignore the name sounds like something a Klingon would eat) wearing blue contact lenses, trying to look cooler than God. I could buy that. Then there is the story setting: somewhere in a fictional Chinese city where a blend of poor Japanese immigrants and Taiwanese and Chinese people live and fight each other. I could buy that, too.

Now it gets ridiculous: all of this is set in the future (2025-2045) and one of the rising gangsters is a vampire. Does that mean we see cool gadgets, special effects, even vampire teeth? No. The whole story could have been set in the 1980's for all the tech and cars. Then there are the gun fights: long coated heroes stand in the middle of rooms and shoot from akimbo guns without moving (or even aiming). Occasionally, they remain out of ammo and reload their guns by throwing ammo clips to one another.

The thing is that if you ignore the vampire angle (which is very very easy, since not much of the lore is used in the film) and the future angle (which is also very easy: just remove the two captions showing the year), then the movie becomes a coming of age, clan gang story. The Godfather this is not, of course, but for that genre and allowing for Asian weirdness and removing about 30 minutes from it, the movie could have fought for an average rating, but as such it is a pretentious borefest.

Update: after reading the reviews of other people I can say with almost certainty that its rating was artificially raised by fakers.

I must admit, at first I wasn't expecting anything good, at all. I was only expecting a cheesy movie promoting Gackt's and Hyde's image, but I'm glad to say it has much more to offer.

Yes, the acting is not that great, but it doesn't suck either, all the cast's well disciplined and they bring enough strength to their characters. Effects lack consistency but action scenes are satisfying enough.

What really hooked me up was the essence of the storyline, although it merges fantastic elements, it also displays a crude reality. The developing of the characters, their doubts and their feelings really got on to me and I think that's the key of this movie. It puts you to think and it does well transmitting all the angst.

It fulfills any expectations for a good drama. I would definitely recommend it to everyone.

Moon Child is touted by its producers as a "wildly entertaining hybrid of futuristic science-fiction, John Woo-style gunplay and Gothic vampire horror." I found it to be one of the worst movies I've ever seen. Terrible acting, writing, and direction prove that pop stars should not be allowed to write or star in movies; the characters are underdeveloped and generate absolutely no sympathy -- in fact, the viewer is hard pressed to care if they live or die; the plot is all over the place; the special effects are cheap. Takahisa Zeze should never be allowed to direct another film. Gackt and HYDE are insufferable -- the movie should have been titled "Hairdressers on Fire."