The only similarity this film has with the manga or anime are the characters – everything else screams “original” interpretation. By that it displays some interesting CGi effects, but it’s original in one aspect, which also raises important questions: who stole the script and who misplaced the plot? After watching this film, you would require a magnifying glass to interpret what on Earth you have just witnessed.

Here’s the plot in a nutshell: Two school boy best friends are worlds apart when it comes their strength. Akira is the timid of the two, popular but not very strong. Ryo is the feared one, cosidered psychotic, but strong. One day Ryo visits Akira in class, and informs him that his father is dead. The two head over to Ryo’s mansion and Akira finds himself faced with Ryo’s dead father in the form of a mutant. Experiments were carried out that released a living energy of evil that turned everyone into demons, including the father. Ryo confesses to also being infected, and finally Akira is also attacked and fused with the demon cell – but the difference is that his heart is still human, and therefore he feels no need to annihilate human kind.

So as DevilMan, Akira goes around saving humans from demons, only to discover that human kinda has practically gone bonkers and started to impose a military world where anyone even suspected of being a demon can be shot. On top of all this, Akira has to keep his idenitity secret to protect his adopted family, and he also has to find out who Satan is; a demon that intends to kill all humanity and create a world only for demons, whereas most demons simply feed off humans.

An awful lot has been stuffed into the 1 hour and 40 minutes of film, most of which is just overwhelming and fails to reason most of the events. As you watch, the plot jumps from one thing to the next in a matter of sequences that follow no continuity or logic. By the time Akira discovers he has powers, he’s already fighting a demon that was in love with the demon he infused with and profers to kill Akira. Ryo saves him, the demon disappears, and we’re none the wiser about the demon in Akira, except he’s called Amon.

Visually it’s not bad, with some interesting and decent CGi effects being used. Most of the action seems to take place in the dark, however, and therefore makes much of the fighting done hard to see. The film does improve visually right at the end, with the entire world turning into that of a demon world, and they seem to have oput their creative hats on with regards to design. The costumes and make up effects are also pretty flamboyant, and often camp and humourous, though that probably wasn’t the intention.

There’s no real plot, other than the one described, but there seems to be a homoerotic relationship insinuated between Akira and Ryo. From Akira telling Ryo that he looks like a very beautiful demon, what with his angel wings and radiant skin. Or Ryo telling Akira that his world is incomplete without him, that he doesn’t care for humans, but him and he likes him. Even as they fight, and the end is near, Ryo still states he will follow Akira wherever life takes him, together forever. Now you could argue that it could be purely platonic, but you only have to watch the film to note that there’s some subtle undertones that deviate from platonic love, and move towards something more homosexual. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it doesn’t work, and tender moments end up being absolute farces than something emotional or sympathetic.

Action scenes that don’t involve special effects are even more hilarious, akin to a Uew Boll film. People fire weapons where the sound effects don’t quite sync either with the deaths or the guns firing. Timing was obviously not important in a rush job of a movie. One particular scene where Ryo jumps on a fountains and fires his guns like a ballarina was particularly hilarious. As was the demon massacre that takes place in comic (read rubbish) fashion.

So much is wrong with this film, such as the speed at which the world starts to destroy itself in paranoia, and the use of a large American to be a news anchor announcing the tragic news, reading a script with all the acting elegance of an arthiritic badger suffering from a severe stammer. Often you note that he’s forgot to read the entire line, and so the result is something robotic, or in this case poorly acted and laughably so.

This is not so much a film, as it is a lot of bad editing from one seems like five hours of footage. A lot of the time, you won’t be able to comprehend the pace, or what happened where and why. Enemies are killed at almost random intervals, followed by chases, followed by large CGi explosions, DevilMan transforming, another fight, some sentimenal crap that’s about as sentimental as a serial killer gutting his victim and some more plot holes.

Acting is abysmal, and it makes a lot of the Z-movie films you might have seen, look like Oscar material by comparison. If the so-called actors actually took acting lessons, it’s certainly not evident here. Direction is confused and horrid, to be completely honest. There are no redeeming features in the film, other than the CGi team actually knows what they’re doing. As I never read the manga, but did watch the anime, i can say this doesn’t follow the anime very closely. The film takes certain key characters and elements and throws them together in a melting pot of confusion and disaster and what you get in the end is something like a Z-minus-movie with nothing of value. It’s pretty much a total disaster.

Verdict: The sort of film you would expect from Satan’s bumhole, and in that regard it’s pretty much a devilish stinker. Avoid