Azumi

Azumi is exactly what I would expect seeing in a Japanese action movie. Though it was billed as an action opera, I’m not sure I see the operatic in this film. Kitamura presents a stylized swordplay film complete with quirky characters, strange humor, and lots and lots of gore. There were some unnecessarily artistic elements such as the beginning which showed a flock (known as a murder) of crows, maybe it was foreshadowing, but it just seemed unnecessary. With the release of Kill Bill we have been reintroduced as Americans to the almost cartoonish violence of the samurai warrior movie. This film is no different.

The plot, as with most action movies, is straight forward and the dialogue is kept to a serviceable minimum. An old warrior trains a band of children to be assassins so they can kill off warlords and avoid widespread war. Thus these young warriors are painted as the good guys though their mission in life is to kill. They are only to kill selectively, though who is directing who should be killed is rather vague. The story paints a very bleak political picture of major infighting that is killing peasants caught between competing warlords. The problem is that which warlords are good and which are not is poorly defined. The first warlord killed seems like a nice guy. The second is evil incarnate, a crafty leader who wishes for war. Thus the story was overly involved and confusing politically and seems to paint its characters broadly. Luckily the direction of the story changes and is significantly simplified when the band of assassins gets stalled on killing a particular warlord and the good guy and bad guy lines are clearly drawn.

The film picks up with the teenage assassins and their master preparing to leave their mountain retreat and begin their work. Azumi is the only girl in this ‘family’ of warriors, but she is the fastest and most gifted of the students. In this film the students and their master are sent to kill three warlords who plan on starting a war to destabilize and remove the government. The first warlord is easily approached and killed. The second is not so easy; he plots and prepares, and hires a number of increasingly insane killers to dispose of the assassins.

The sound effects guys must have had a field day with this movie. I do not think I have seen a more squelchy film than this. Many of the sound effect were used to enhance the fights, but the film was also made funnier through the use of the sounds. If only the music had been as good as the other sound effects, it sounded like canned video game rock. There was also some strange use of slow motion in the action scenes. In general the action sequences were very good with tight editing and to speed up the action and a wealth of camera angles. Thus I felt that the use of slow motion did not add to the scenes but instead felt contrived and bogged down the massive action. I suppose this is because most of the young people in the film were only passable swordsman and it shows in some of the less imaginative sequences.

As with every large scale film, the death scenes are really, really, really long, especially if it is a hero dying. One stab or cut is never enough, neither are ten or twenty, as in Shakespeare the hero must lurch around continuing the fight until they bleed to death, give a good speech, or get put out of their misery by a more squeamish foe than the one who bested them.

This film is truly fun. It is one of only a few movies where there is laughter during a number of the death scenes. I must admit that the vertical 360 degree swoop around the battling characters made me dizzy and completely disoriented, but every filmmaker has to put some kind of new visual effect into his movie these days. And Kitamura is no different, employing a number of panning effects, quick edits, and swoops to enhance the drama of the swordplay.

The true villain of this film is an insane imprisoned killer who looks like a cross between Jesus and Boy George named Bijimaru. He walks around in white robes with pink eye makeup carrying a rose and killing everyone in his path. He is a fun character because he truly takes a childish glee in killing a worthy foe. During the final battle between him and Azumi, Bijimaru is smiling and laughing as he fights for his life. His backup is an equally over the top character, a man nicknamed Monkey man who has such an outrageously elaborate hairdo it looks like a piece of Rococo art. Before this major showdown Azumi and the other assassins must face armies of ninjas, hired killers, and ruff looking outlaws with varying levels of sanity.

As the film progresses Azumi grows from a confused, scared, and introspective into a true hero complete with cape and body armor. A surprising growth since we in America are used to our action heroes having the depth and flavor of a saltine cracker, we aren’t used to seeing heroes that embrace the task of killing as easily as they tie on their capes. The ending of this film was surprisingly and refreshingly unAmericanized. Instead of taking the easy way out, riding into the sunset to live a quiet life with the friend she has made, she continues her mission as an assassin to complete her fallen master’s plan.

The whole film is over the top, silly, truly fun, and beautifully done. It is easy to see in the wealth of chambara films and American Westerns that Kitamura and Tarantino really revere the film craft that they work in. This film is as much homage to the films that went before as it is an action movie in its own right. Here we see a small girl hack her way through ninjas and cutthroats with aplomb, and the greatest thing that can be said is that as production values and budgets have expanded so has the level and quantity of the violence depicted. Overall this was a fun and silly movie well worth watching.