Gantz

If you like Shinsuke Sato's prominent works such as Alice in Borderland and Kingdom, you'll love "Gantz", especially given its earlier production compared to those. A visually striking sci-fi action film that explores profound themes amidst its intense action sequences and impressive visual effects. The movie investigates existential questions about life, death, and the nature of humanity, delivering exhilarating action scenes from its talented cast, led by Kazunari Ninomiya and Kenichi Matsuyama. It's still worth noting that the film's graphic violence and gore might narrow its potential audience appeal.

If you think that only Hollywood is tapping deep into comic book source material for its films, well they're not alone, with the Japanese also digging deep into its rich manga culture for adaptations to bring to the silver screen. It's taken Gantz quite some time to reach our shores given that the concluding sequel had already been aired weeks ago and we're only getting the first installment, but as I say it's always better late than never. Based upon the original works by Hiroya Oku, Gantz is a science fiction fantasy film that posed a lot more questions than it answered, and really asks that you put aside nagging thoughts and accept things for what they are at face value until the second film rolls along.

We're introduced to the teenagers Masaru Kato (the popular Kenichi Matsuyama) and Kei Kurono (Kazunari Ninomiya) who meet by chance at a subway station, once best friends with the latter always standing up for the former. They get involved in rescuing a man who had fallen onto the train tracks, but in the process get themselves killed, yet transported into some sparse apartment room together with strangers, all of whom had their life expired, and a huge black orb to whom they owe their temporal lives to. Here's where a lot of questions get tossed up as to the origins of the orb, and some thick existential queries - are they really dead, or operating on a separate limbo plane, or are really just dreaming - but put all of these aside to just soak up the ground rules that the characters have to engage in, and the set action sequences that come with the territory.

To help make the narrative a little bit more palatable, treat it as an extreme version of Men in Black, where a randomly selected group of apparently dead folks get topped up into an existing team, all of whom are given exo-skeleton suits to power up and weapons fit to kill aliens who walk this earth. Gantz, the orb within which houses a comatosed bald man communicating via a console on the orb, summons the players, sets the mission objectives, and teleports them into the thick of the action. Survive, and you get to live another day. Die, and you'll stay dead permanently. With a catch of course, where a Gantz summoned player earn meagre points in a mission (in addition to getting insulted), and a 100 points allows one to either wipe one's memory and go back to the "real world" not remembering a single thing when serving Gantz, or opting to resurrect a fallen comrade.

The first hour or so is spent learning the ground rules, and what better way than to be thrown into the deep end of the pool in an effort to immerse both the characters and audience in double quick time. Our main protagonists with their different perspectives and values often come up clashing against once another in their ideals, but when push comes to shove it's a life and death issue should they choose not to cooperate with each other, and with others in the same boat, unless of course one decides to use the clueless newbies as fodder.

The story's made more interesting with this particular contrast between the two leads, one being very reluctant to shed more blood and taking it upon himself to ensure that the newbies are properly briefed and told of the risks involved, often being ridiculed, while the other sees his new life under Gantz as an opportunity to rise up and be the hero he's meant to be, since in real life he's a zero this presents him a chance to answer what would be his calling in life, bordering on arrogance and partaking in riskier maneuvers. But alas given the need to cram everything into a slightly more than two hour film, you can bet that plenty of characterization and development got thrown out of the window, and subplot casualties include the romances between Kato and buxomy Kei Kishimoto (Natsuna Watanabe), and that of Kurono and fellow student and manga enthusiast Tae Kojima (Yuriko Yoshitaka), whom I suspect will have a much larger role in the concluding film.

Surprisingly there is plenty of bloody violence and gore peppered throughout the film, sticking close to the treatment as in the manga and anime, with only the gratuitous nudity in the source materials being toned down by quite a bit in the live action movie. Computer generated graphics are the order of the day, as plenty of futuristic weapons got produced, in addition to the skin tight exo-skeleton suit. Villainous aliens take on different looks, from robots with awkward mobility, to inhabiting statues of Buddhas that give rise to one of the largest action sequences in the film that came complete with high casualty and property damage.

Undoubtedly a special effects extravaganza, Gantz is ultimately half a film, and I am looking forward to the concluding episode to wrap up the open questions posed here. After all, the sequel's subtitle is Perfect Answer, so I'm really hoping for that to happen. Stay tuned during and after the closing credits for that trailer to the sequel, and tell me if that doesn't pique your interest even more, so much so that like me I'm putting that anime DVD collection on my wish list. Recommended!

I only know the summary part of the manga, so I will stick to the movie itself. The movie starts with two old friends( ? ) that coincidentally meet on a train platform. In this brief moment, they attempt to rescue a man off of the train tracks and in trying this, they are killed by the oncoming train. Or were they? The two awaken in a room with a few other strangers, all of which claim to have been killed. Accompanying them is a mysterious black orb which gives some very vague instructions on what the "group" needs to do. Basically the task is to kill aliens that are on the earth hiding out. Sounds corny, but it is far from that. The movie is so well filmed including cinematography, editing, locale that pretty much whatever the group was sent to do was going to be a treat. Lucky for us viewers, it was an exciting mission at that. As the movie progresses, we learn that each person is awarded "points" for surviving (since if not, well, they are dead) and what can be done with those points is part of the mystery. The effects are very good, and basic, not overdone at all. This makes it much easier to get into the film and the characters in it. The acting was very good, even if I personally had to be distracted from their performances by reading the subtitles. Either way, I could tell by visual features and expressions that it was well done. Each encounter gets more and more difficult, as one would assume, and leads to a very open ended climax that makes you want to see more. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie from start to finish and recommend it to anyone that likes sci-fi and originality. Please Hollywood, can you keep your hands off and not remake this, let the Japanese do their thing, they have brought us a gem in this as it is. Enjoy. 6.9/10

This movie started out so good, it was almost criminal it turned out to be such completely unbelievable crap in the end.

The basic premise was good, for this kind of movie that is:

1. A bunch of guys die for several reasons.

2. The end up in a room with a mysterious black globe.

3. The globe gives them missions to kill UFOs residing in Japan. Hinting that they may redeem their lives this way.

4. They are given suitcases with black suits and cool sci-fi guns.

5. They are attacked by vicious UFOs.

So any person equipped with more than two brain cells would have:

1. Donned the suit.

2. Quickly checked out the weapon and got ready for the mission.

3. You wanna get your life back, right?

This far into the movie, I expected they would, I was eager for what was to come. This could be great!

Then they are magically "lasered" away to someplace in Tokyo and the UFO guy is not late to show up. Well not to spoil what happens too much, they are completely unprepared for the mission. And why?

1. They have completely failed to put on their cool black suits. OK, they girl has put it on. And looks good in it!

2. They have completely failed to check out their cool weapons.

Not to to spoil the movie, if there is anything to spoil, let me say this as a reality check:

1. If I knew I had died and had a chance to redeem my life by carrying out a mission, I would be sure to use any equipment given me.

2. If a monster was attacking me or my fellow undead, I would be sure to shoot first and ask questions later. Out of pure survival instinct.

3. If a monster was beating the crap out of one of my friends, then, even if I had no gun, I would do something to help out, lest I live in shame for the rest of my life.

4. If I was a hopeless nerd like most of the guys in the movie, and a cool beautiful girl showed interest in me, I would at least talk to her.

The guys in this movie, though, fail on all these basic point of normal behaviour. They are all prize-winning village idiots, almost autistic in their passiveness, hopelessly asocial towards the beautiful girls that seem to like these idiots, egoistic, craven individuals who can't use a weapon or even throw a stick at a monster in order to save their own or other people's lives. They lack the most basic survival instincts or humanity.

As a result, I spent most of the movie shouting "FOR THE LOVE GOD MAN, SHOOT, SHOOT, SHOOT!!"

I'm not a trigger-happy man in normal situations... But with vicious UFOs attacking me, come and get some! :-)

When I got this I was hoping for a Sci-fi movie with some shooting, a bit of a story and some interesting characters. This is exactly what I got.

The pace of the movie is typically Eastern, the action scenes are fast and packed, the rest is slow and considered.

A large portion of the film is dedicated to the characters trying to find out who they are; as well as trying to understand each other.

Don't expect too much exposition. Why does all this strange stuff happen? Because it's a Sci-fi movie; roll with it.

The affects are good, the bad guys are interesting and (compared to Western villains) refreshing and quirky.

ACting is good, camera work solid, production lavish.