Sunday, December 30, 2007

Review: Azumi 2 - Death or Love

Summary
Genre: Historical, action
Release Date: Mar. 12, 2005
Starring:

  • Ueto Aya as Azumi
  • Kuriyama Chiaki as Kozue
  • Oguri Shun as Ginkaku
Azumi 2 takes place shortly after the events of the first movie. Azumi and Nagara are the only surviving assassins whose purpose was prevent a civil war in Japan. Their last mission is to assassinate Sanada Masayuki. However, Sanada has recruited an army and has hired a deadly ninja clan. During their mission, Azumi meets a bandit who resembles her friend Nachi.

Review
Both movies are very similar and are basically about assassins killing anyone that the enemy can throw at them. However, I thought that the first Azumi movie was slightly better than Azumi 2. Azumi 2 had a couple of things that just turned me off. First of all, in Azumi 2, Azumi meets a group of bandits that decide to help her out, but most of the actors who play the bandits just seem very goofy. They’re very horrible actors who are just in the movie to get killed and they just put a bad impression on the movie. I also didn’t like the order in which some of the characters were killed. I won’t mention who gets killed, but for some reason the important characters that seem like decent fighters get killed pretty early on while the no-names get to live a lot longer. Azumi 2 also had a very high death count, too high in my opinion. The sheer number of major characters who die make the ending very week. If they just kept some of the characters alive, they could have added a little extra to ending.

However, Azumi 2 can provide some enjoyment to fans of Japanese historical action movies. The fighting choreography is nothing too special, but the fighting scenes are somewhat enjoyable to watch because of the unique enemies and the weapons they use. I also enjoyed watching how some of the enemies got killed. Though very unreal, they’re pretty interesting to see. The same goes for how the movie deals with blood. When an enemy gets killed blood splatters everywhere like a hose. It’s definitely better than seeing just blood dripping.


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Pro
  • Has some enjoyment for historical/action movie fans
  • Blood splatter goodness
  • High production quality
  • All-star cast, this time with Oguri Shun as a main character
Cons
  • Number of major characters that get killed is way too high
  • Characters that look like decent fighters are killed early on while the no-names get to live longer
  • Ending was very weak, they could added a lot more if some major characers stayed alive
  • Some special effects were cheesy
Recommendation
If you’re a fan of historical/action movies, you should watch Azumi 2. If you’re not, you should probably avoid it.

Rating: 6.7/10

Related Reviews (historical/action)
Azumi
Shinobi: Heart Under Blade

1 comments:

Anonymous August 10, 2008 at 4:47 a.m.  

I simply love Azumi!

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