I noticed about this movie as part of the new films to be shown in CGV and as luck would have it, my wife got another invitation to the special screening a week before its wide release. However, due to some reasons, we were only allowed to post our views about the movie today. Anyway, I wrote this post few days ago after the screening since I wanted to write them while it was still fresh in my memory. So what was the movie about? Let us go into detail below.
Brief Story Line
Set in the future, a group of young men who were "transformed" from various swords owned by people in the past were recruited as part of a team to maintain the history intact from attacks by evil forces who wanted to change history. Led by their captain Munechika (Hiroki Suzuki), the rest of the team that included the joker Nihongou (Hiroaki Iwanaga), the youngest Fudou (Taizo Shiina, the hot headed Hasebe (Masanari Wada), the guy dressed like a mage called Yagen Toushirou (Ryō Kitamura) and Yamanbagiri (Yoshihiko Aramaki) were sent on a mission to protect history related to the 16th century Japanese feudal lord Oda Nobunaga (Koji Yamamoto).
However, what was supposed to be a simple enough mission turned out to be more challenging, especially with the huge army who tried to alter history. With the addition of other members like Honebami (Fuma Sadamoto) and Uguisumaru (Tomoki Hirose), the team had no choice but to fight against those evil forces. And to complicate matters, there seemed to be some secrecy going on in their citadel (head quarter).
So what would happen to these young men? Find them all in this fantasy action movie.
End of Brief Story Line
Well to be honest, when the movie started, my wife and I were having a bit difficulty in enjoying it. It was pretty hard to understand and grasp the idea, especially since the introduction was very brief. And the fact that the early part was shown in the dark (at night) without proper introduction of each of the team members, made it more challenging to familiarize with them. Not to mention there were few new characters introduced to us in the middle as well. But as the story progressed, we finally could have a better idea on what the movie was all about and we were able to differentiate the characters better.
The movie was moving in a quite fast pace, sometimes too fast and make us had to concentrate to understand better. But I am pretty confident fans of the games would have no trouble in understanding it. Yes, this movie was indeed an adaptation of a very popular video game in Japan with the same title released in 2015 through DMM Games. I am not really sure if it was that popular in Indonesia (at least I never played or heard of this game until I saw this film). Some audience who sat in the row behind me and my wife were always screaming and talking in loud voice, though it was unclear whether they were doing so because they were familiar with the characters or just excited to see these guys looking like anime characters (some guys did dress better than others).
The story itself was not bad. It had some elements of surprise and twist but because it was focusing on the history which was most likely known by heart to the Japanese, those of us who were not from Japan need to put some effort to appreciate them better. We ended up just go with the flow and try our best to enjoy fun interaction among this group, plus the action. There was one pretty fun character in the movie played by Norito Yashima as Nobunaga's right hand man Hashiba Hideyoshi who provided some amusing moments.
Oh, the action in here were pretty awesome. The fight sequence were done seriously and it looked like the main actors were real martial artists. My wife was also in awe with how cool these young guys looked in those fights, even in slow motion. I too was amazed by the action sequence and some nice visual effects, especially during the finale fights. The sound effect though, not really the best part to my opinion. Not clear whether it was due to the sound system or from the movie itself, as sometimes they sounded too loud but not in a good way.
In a movie like this where it has a large ensemble cast, naturally we would have our own favorites of the characters. To my wife, her most favorite was the captain, Munechika who was played very coolly by Hiroki Suzuki. I also thought the same of this guy, but somehow my favorite was actually Koji Yamamoto who played the charismatic Oda Nobunaga. He really looked the part and I was convinced that if I were living during that period, Nobunaga would look like him. For me, my favorite character of the good guys was Hasebe who reminded me of a character from the highly popular fighting video game from my time (you guys probably know who I was referring to). Btw, there was no mid or post end credit scene at all, but there was a nice Japanese song playing during the end credit scenes.
Overall this was a good action movie. It had some sci fi and fantasy elements and fans of the game would likely love this one. But I cannot help feel this film was a bit too genre specific. For general audience or people who had never played or known about the game like me and my wife, would be having a huge challenge to appreciate it. However, if you are not bothered with the rather complex story and are willing to see a movie to purely enjoy the fights scenes and cool looking anime-like characters, then this one should be able to satisfy you.
Mike's Movie Moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
A big thank you from us to Rivki from CGV for the invitation to this event. We really appreciate it and look forward to future events.
Below are some pictures from the event:
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