Casshern (2004)

 

It's Japanese, alternate dystopian futuristic and has cybernetic enhancements? This must be an adaptation of an anime! 

Well, it is, actually. Or better: a remake and live-action version of an anime with the same name. 

The world has seen a massive war yet again, but here, Japan has conquered the Eurasian continent. There are massive, almost steampunk like cities and beyond that, the world feels desolate, in great part due to immense radiation and pollution. Into this tale walks dr Azuma, who has created something called 'neo-cells' that have the ability to regenerate and heal people, but the governing leaders don't want to fund his research. 

So naturally, a shady military operation does exactly that. Because of course.

Meanwhile, his son goes off to fight in another war against rebel factions and gets killed. But when his body is brought back to the doctor, a bizarre alien object resembling a massive thunderbolt, strikes the lab and from the growing vats of bodyparts stumble new people. Because one of the associates panics, they nearly all get gunned down and only four escape to a far away and forgotten castle that also is a massive factory of mechs and tanks. These mutants now call themselves Shinzo Ningen or 'Neo Sapiens' and want to eradicate humanity. As you do when carrying a grudge, of course. 

But dr Azuma has also resurrected his son, who he passes on to a colleague, because now the boy's muscles can't be contained and he needs special body armour. 

Yes, you see where this is going. 

Young Azuma survives the ordeal and is now supercharged and ready to stand up to the Shinzo Ningen, evening the playing field. But who will win?

The setup of the story seems like a cool idea. Nothing really new, but Japan and bio-enhancements is a bond that has often given the world some excellent stuff. Alas, not so here. I can't compare to the anime (because I haven't seen it yet), but this film is not only way too long, the pacing is horrendous. Most of the time, it's an absolute slog to get through as nearly nothing happens and scenes are drawn out in painful fashion. Then all of a sudden, thumping music starts up, we get a fight scene that is always edited in a jumbled and hyperactive fashion, before it's back to a snail's pace. It really feels extremely disjointed. 

What feels like a fun idea at first, but quickly becomes tedious, is this film's colourscheme. It switches between oversaturated oranges and reds, to monochrome, to a few scenes where colours and lighting are so overdone it hurts the eyes. I get the need for a distinct visual style, but this is a bit much most of the time. This might work better in animation, but for a live action depiction, it just feels off and rapidly loses its charm. What doesn't help either is the CG, which looks horrible. For a film that wants to be all heady and have highbrow concepts and dialogue about loss and humanity, they sure skimped on the budget for decent CG robots, tanks and backgrounds, holy fudgenuggets. 

So you get a promising idea but pacing that's off, visuals that get tedious and dialogue that wants to be high art but feels pretentious. Not the best of combinations in any shape or form. 'Casshern' is simply too much of a mess to be able to convince. You could try it if you want something different visually, but nothing really sticks. I've seen this one about three times and I can never remember anything, which isn't a good sign. So this is highly skippable.