Azumi 2
Eastern
Eye (Madman Entertainment)
MA15+
R4
DVD
Azumi was originally based on a Manga comic of the same name and the film certainly
embodies some of the excess found in that medium, however, at the same time it
also has surprising character development, philosophical musings on the nature
of loyalty and war and even a little romance.
In the first film, a legendary warrior Gessai (Yoshio Harada), who has tired of war after his son
is killed, is assigned a secret mission by a local high priest. The task
is to stop the wars that are destroying feudal
The central character Azumi
(Aya Ueto) was found as a
little girl sitting by the corpse of her dead mother. She was trained to be a
fearsome warrior along with nine others, all boys. When the children became
young adults, Gessai announces that they are ready to
engage in their "mission," their first task is to pair off and kill
their opposition.
These new assassins, now bloodied for
first time, who know nothing outside their sheltered world, save the way of the
sword, are sent into the world to track down and kill three warlords.
Azumi was an outrageous and violent film:
Swords cut and dice, bodies fly and blood flows. It was a not surprisingly a
great success and is considered cult classic and while setting the stage for a
follow on film, also set the bar pretty high. The sheer excess of the first
film would be hard to match. Even the strange and bizarre perversity of Azumi’s greatest foe, Bijomaru
(Jo Odagiri) who is a camp sword-wielding foe who wears women’s clothing and
leaves flowers on each kill makes a follow-up hard to imagine. The sheer
ferocity of some of the battle scenes in Azumi where
whole villages are left decimated would be hard to match.
Azumi 2: Dead or Love is a great looking firm,
Aya Ueto is back as Azumi and the storyline continues
in a fairly consistent manner. Azumi is on the run
with fellow assassin Nagara (Yuma Ishigaki),
the two being seemingly the only ones still alive after the events of the first
movie. The pair is being tracked by Kanbei (Kazuki Kitamura), a shamed samurai whose own lord was
killed by Azumi. Determined to regain his honour (remember his has let her kill his master!), Kanbei has hired himself a squad of ninjas. These are no
normal ninjas however, they are armed with all the mod cons including full body
armor, post apocalyptic face masks and some rather bizarre weapons even
including guns and pistols !
The storyline in Azumi
2 seems no match for the first film, while there are some interesting twists
such as whether Ginkaku is somehow Nachi (one of the original assassins she supposedly
killed), a spy subplot and a little romance, on the whole the film does not
have the intelligence of the first once nor the action packed, rollercoaster
exhilaration.
Sure, there is still lots of swordplay,
slash and jab and blood, but the adversaries at times do seem, well, a bit too
over the top, they seem like they are out of one of those post apocalyptic
films where the world has ended and is now run by gangs with bikes, strange
masks and oversized weapons. They are too caricatured and not especially
believable. Yes, Azumi was based on a Manga comic, but somehow the first Azumi
film created a sense of reality that this one just cannot match.
That being said, it is a fun film, Azumi is a great “schoolgirl skirt wearing” killer and the
action is enjoyable. It shows plenty of creativity and style in filming and
some nice “set pieces”, I especially liked the poison spider web scene. When
compared to a lot of other swordplay films on the market it is still a “cut
above” and well worth having in your DVD collection.
The DVD from Madman is a solid, high
quality package. The colours of the film are bright
and strong and the DTS and DD 5.1 soundtrack is superb with nice background
sounds creating and sustaining the mood and environment of the film.
Extras include Making of Azumi 2, Original Trailers and Madman Trailers.