Sky High

As with many of Ryuhei Kitamura's film, Sky High displays plenty of great ideas (a serial killer ripping people's hearts out, the gates of Rage, where murdered people go and are given three choice - heaven, earth, or hell), an genre bending story (sword play, horror, sci-fi, love story, serial killer) and plenty of visual style. However, Sky High also fall foul of Ryuhei Kitamura's usual faults. For this type of film, and the way it is shot, it is just too long, running at over two hours. Kitamura tries to give the story depth and meaning (failing most the time), when it should be a great popcorn flick with less depth. Take his two major success - Versus and Azumi. Here there is very little plot, just great action. Alive, another of Kitamura's films, which is very similarly themed to Sky High, also suffers these faults. Given the right script, Kitamura will make a genuinely great film (he almost did it with Versus), but until then, he need someone to come and cut his film down.

Well, I was expecting the worst from Sky High after hearing lots of bad reports, so maybe having low expectations helped - because I absolutely loved it. To me it was his best film since Versus, and leaps and bounds above Azumi.

Personally I thought Versus had a much stronger story and a better way of telling it than most of Kitamura's films (especially Azumi), but I seem to be in a minority there. I think Sky High still has weaker storytelling than Versus, simply because it is far less economical. Versus has a pretty rich universe and complex mythology, but it doesn't ram it down your throat at all - it leaves the reader (err, viewer) to put together the pieces themselves. Sky High has an even richer mythology, but does ram it down your throat a little too much. There were plenty of things that could have been left alluded to rather than being shown or explained. In fact I'm kind of glad the extended cut on the R2J special edition doesn't have subtitles, because the theatrical cut is already 2 hours and could have benefited from a little more trimming.

The action scenes certainly aren't up to the level of those in Versus, and anybody looking purely for action is sure to be disappointed. However, I thought they were better than those in Aragami even if some of the camera work and editing could have been better. The film in general had a bit of a DTV feel to it, which I guess means it was probably quite a rushed production (which would explain how it seemingly appeared out of nowhere).

The film felt like a very natural extension of the Kitamura themeology (can I use that word?). There are elements (and cast members) from Versus, The Messenger, Alive and Aragami and the sense of a continual developing of his motifs of destiny, death and rebirth... it's a very ambiguous and vague set of ideas but I find that all the more interesting I think.

Overall, it's a film with flaws (that are partly attributable to short budget/schedule and partly to Kitamura's lack of maturity as a director) but one that I found much more interesting than I expected from the reviews. Oh, some of the acting is really bad I should mention (why anybody decided giving Yumiko thingy another acting job was a good idea after Princess Blade I don't know), but on the plus side the film has an extremely high quotient of gorgeous women (oh, maybe that's why). I thought that was the unfathomably gorgeous Kanae Uotani as Rei, but she's not credited on IMDB as such - so which new incredibly gorgeous actress was it?

Anyway, I'm one of the few people that really enjoyed ALIVE as well, so if you didn't like that then don't get too excited about SKY HIGH from my recommendation :p

I like Ryuhei Kitamura movies. He makes a decent effort trying to be cool and I really appreciate it. There is something in his vision, in his artistic decisions, in his whole approach to cinema as art, that makes him ... I don't know ... more then just a film creator. No wonder he is already a cult phenomenon.

"Sky High" is a Ryuhei Kitamura film, alright. The cinematography is clean and aesthetic, art design is pretty impressive, and kind of alienated, the swords are long and fast, the blood is red and hot, and the Japanese women are beautiful and dangerous as hell. (Check out Kimika Yoshino as the White Witch, mmmm... sweet).

And the story, well, its really boring, stupid, and just not interesting enough.

Some supernatural and magical reality, some lame characters with immature behavior, some tedious fights that could make you fall asleep and some other totally unexciting piles of crap. So if you really want to see this film, if you feeling that you don't want to miss one of Ryuhei Kitamura experiences, watch it, but don't expect for masterpiece.

Don't bother yourself with this slow, melodramatic and infantile movie, with bad directing, really bad acting, awfully bad dialogs and with surprisingly bad ending.

** P.S: "Kung Fu Hustle" by Stephen Chow, is my favorite choice anyway.

Let me get this out of the way now. I am a huge Ryuhei Kitamura fan. I think I have now seen all of his movies (Heat After Dark, Down To Hell, Versus, Azumi, Aragami, Alive...... and even Battlefield Baseball, which he sort of had a hand in), and though enjoyed them all, I found Sky High to be one of his best. This definitely sits in my top 3, with Versus and Azumi.

Anyone familiar with Kitamura's films will recognize his style immediately. Fantastic cinematography, digitally assisted effects, hyperkenetic fights, and story lines that at best can be described as complicated. He seems to weave a mythology into most of his work, and it all seems very new and interesting.

In any case, Sky High really got to me because the world he spins here has really defined rules, and they are played to the best of their limits. We know that the death of one character will cause a chain reaction in both the living and spirit world, and that was really intriguing.

The film has flaws, to be sure. It's a little long, and sometimes you can predict what's coming next, but it's still very good. This is the kind of movie that looks good enough to have a very wide theatrical release (except for the demon at the end, what was with that?) and do well once word of mouth got around.

Anyway, highly recommended viewing. Can't wait to see what Kitumura will do with Godzilla: Final Wars.

A detective hunting a serial killer is left devastated when his bride to be is murdered on their wedding day. As with all the victims, her heart was removed. As he hunts down leads to find the killer, His bride, Mina, finds herself at The Gate Of Resentment. There she is faced with 3 choices. Go through the gate and be reborn, become a ghost, or take revenge and kill, and end up in hell.....

Ryuhei Kitamura, who directed the action packed Azumi, tones down the violence here, but still stages some impressive action sequences. The cast are all impressive.

But what really gets you about this movie, is the emotional content. Based on a Japanese comic book, there are twists in the story which do come as a surprise. And the love portion of the story works well, both for the detective Kohei, and his bride Mina, but also the bond between the killer, her boss (who needs the hearts for a ritual) and the boss's sick wife. Not everything is as clear cut as it would seem to appear here, and this is a refreshing change.

Although I've not read the comic book, as a movie it is very impressive, with a lot of imagination. If only writers and directors in Hollywood and the west could come up with ideas this imaginative.

This is a movie worth checking out.