Female empowerment, a woman who can fight on the same level as men and better, a high body count. Not Tomb Raider, but something equally awful from director Ryuhei KItamura of Versus fame.
There’s the standard old Japan war of the Toyotomi trying to topple the Tokugawa Shogun and vice versa, and naturally the Tokugawa needs protecting from the splinter factions who dare to challenge their rule. Enter The Magnificent Seven or The Seven Samurai, whatever you preferred cliche is. 10 children brought up to be assassins under the rule of their master, Gessai in order to prepare for their mission to take out the three heads of the Toyotomi.
Azumi is the only girl of the lot, but is treated as a guy, even in how they talk. She doesn’t do pretty, and she doesn’t do nice stuff, but she’s a mean cook when it comes to swinging her blade wherever needed. Their training complete, they are told to kill each other and the survivors to come join their master. Reluctantly they do, and the five that survive go on to carry out the mission.
Along the way they meet a troupe, the Toyotomi get wind of the Tokugawa plan and send their own weapon of mass assassination. Typically things escalate, the good guys start losing members and Azumi is around to save the day, with her good will and prayers of hope carried with the blade she wields. I would love to charge the film with substance abuse, but alas there is nothing to charge it with as there is no substance to abuse here. Azumi is an all frills, no content piece which has way too much bad style and overacting to be contained on film. This amount of bad acting must surely be confined for experimental research, no?
The high body count has all the finesse and eloquence of an enema, and the conviction of a fraudster caught red handed with the evidence which sends him to prison
The leads are depressingly dull for a start, with their sullen, melancholy compsure and their anally-righteous attitude knowing full well their duty having been brough up as kids to learn to kill. There’s a level of illogic applied that makes the characters unbelievable and shockingly crap. They are souless maneqquins with little to offer but a pretty face and some fancy, and unrealistic foot work.
Sword fighting is what you would expect, and sword fighting is what you get. Although it’s not as you would expect. For a start, there’s no tension, no drama, no suspense and frankly no bloody entertaintment to boot from any of the fighting. The fighting, much like the acting, is bloated and over the top, offering no realism and simply a high number of people that can jimp when touched by a plastic sword. That’s one of my other annoyances with the film, in that I am not asking for gore, but a bit of realism in the fighting. Where’s the blood? Often you will watch a fight where the blade is placed on the chest and the camera hangs on for a second to let you see the sword remove but, my word, where’s the blood? The bloodless sword is a little too much if they want me to get into it. If I wanted a family film without blood, I’d rent Bambi. At least that has some humour in it.
The high body count has all the finesse and eloquence of an enema, and the conviction of a fraudster caught red handed with the evidence which sends him to prison. It’s incredibly inept film making from Kitamura who practically did something similar in his superior Versus film. It’s direction was much pacier than this slug, and much more interesting in terms of story and action. Azumi, on the other hand is a diabolical piece bores instead of entertains, and makes you yawn instead of gasp.
She doesn’t do pretty, and she doesn’t do nice stuff, but she’s a mean cook when it comes to swinging her blade wherever needed
Of course, when you realise that you sat through this tripe at some un-Godly hour in the morning, expecting some solid entertainment, only to find nearly 140 minutes later that all you got was the lollistick without the lolly, well that’s simply adding insult to the proverbial injury. Azumi is both inconsistent and dull, and the fighting simply harks back to 1960s moving making. In film like the Samurai trilogy, I expected this, and it worked for the time, but even by its standards, Azumi’s action is laughably poor at best. Since that’s it’s trump card, it’s a failure too.
Kitamura was given a lot of money and it looks like he’s used every ounce to provide a dull spectacle, a superficial story and a modicum of thought in the way of entertainment. You’re likely to sleep your way through it, and waking up half way through will not lose you the plot in any shape or form. That is if you’re awake long enough to care.
Verdict: Hyped spectacle of the ridiculous kind. Bad acting, worse direction, and tedious action