[Movie Review] Gantz
Based on the best-selling manga and anime by Hiroya Oku, Gantz premiered in over 300 U.S. theaters across 46 different states last night, nine days before it’s release in Japan. It’s awesome that we westerners are finally getting some special treatment from the east, but did the film live up to the hype?
Gantz is the first installment of a two-part saga starring Kenichi Matsuyama (most notable for his role as L in the Death Note movies) and Japanese pop sensation Kazunari Ninomiya. The story focuses on various people who somehow wind up in a small apartment room with a giant, black, metallic sphere in the center named Gantz. These people all have one thing in common: the last thing they remember before winding up in the room is dying.
Gantz tells everyone that their old lives are over and he will use their new lives however he wishes, so he sends them on missions to kill aliens hiding throughout Tokyo. To help them out, he gives them guns and super-powered bodysuits. Each mission has a time limit and anyone who survives is transported back to the room with all their wounds healed and awarded points. Gantz also uses these score recaps to critique each player’s performance by making fun of them. For example, the sexy Kei Kishimoto (played by the babe-a-licious Natsuna Watanabe pictured below) is awarded zero points because her boobs bounced too much. Gantz is a dick like that.
It’s later revealed that once someone gets 100 points, they can either have their memory erased and return to their normal lives, or bring a dead person from their memory back to life.
The heart and soul of Gantz lies in its action scenes, which is a bit of a shame because they’re far and few in between. This flick had a budget of 4 billion Yen (USD $45 million) which is pretty uncommon for a Japanese film, but when you see it in action, you quickly realize that just about every penny was put to good use. There’s giant CG Buddah statues that engage the protagonists in Shadow of the Collosus-ish battles, cars and buildings being demolished left and right, creatures and humans exploding into giant slimy messes, and the bad-ass suits that the heroes wear each cost $5,000 to make with each actor having 10 suits made for them.
But you’d think that when the movie only has three major action scenes, a little more care would be put into each one. Everyh battle sequence took place at night and the lighting was super dark which made it tough to tell what was going on at times. Everything was probably dark on purpose to make the glowing blue dots on the suits look more awesome and Tron-like (which was totally sweet), but even when it wasn’t too dark, it seemed like the camera was in way too close and it was hard to tell what you were looking at. But when the fights were visible, they were freaking fantastic.
Fans of the manga and anime will be disappointed to find out that some characters have been removed and new ones added, but even more disappointing is the lack of extreme violence, sex, and potty-mouthedness that the series is most known for. Sure, there’s buckets and buckets of blood, but where are the exploding heads when players leave the zone? Where’s the heavy questioning of morality and murder - the main theme of the anime and manga? And most of all, where’s the boobies!? I don’t want to paint myself or other otaku as bloodthirsty weirdos, but these are all things people loved the original series for, so why take them out?
All in all, Gantz didn’t blow my mind like I was hoping it would, but it wasn’t terrible. It was a fun popcorn movie with some cool fight scenes & special effects that can be enjoyed no matter how familiar you are with the original series it’s based on.
3/5
