• Directed by Ryuhei Kitamura
• Written by Ryuhei Kitamura and Yudia Yamaguchi
• Starring
  • Tak Sakaguchi
  • Hideo Sakaki
  • Chieko Misaka
  • Kenji Matsuda
  • Yuichiro Arai

You’ve heard it from me time and again. Plot mechanics. Story structure. I’ve got writerhood in my blood, so that’s the stance from which I look to just about every movie, the hammer by which I judge every nail. (Ouch. Cliche abuse!)

Well, you remember that moment in Star Trek 6 when Spock says dismissively to a drop-jawed Valeris, “Logic, logic, logic…. Logic is the beginning of wisdom, Valeris, not the end.” We’re going to have one of those moments here.

Because what makes this movie work ain’t the story. Far from it; the story by itself is a weak, thin little thing.

But the storytelling absolutely kicks tremendous ass.

Who says pretty boys can’t shoot?

Imagine Peter Jackson and John Woo co-directing. Imagine Alvin Ecarma or Eric Thornett (or Alvin Ecarma AND Eric Thornett) making a zombie picture. It’s a visual feast of action and motion and sound, where violence isn’t exploitation, it’s an integral part of the palette. It’s cinematic caffeine.

In an echo of The Beyond, the preamble tells us that there are 666 portals to the other side spread around the world. (That many? Inflation, you know.) And one of them (the 444th, though that really depends on which end you’re counting from) is right smack-dab in the middle of Japan — a forest in which the rest of our tale’s about to take place.

The introductory action sequence lets us know that we’re in for a treat: a katana-wielding warrior taking on a dozen zombies with their own swords. He makes mincemeat of them in a whirl of energetic cinematography and choreography, but is defeated in the end by someone faster on the draw — a mysterious bug-eyed guy who looks like a Japanese Gregory Hines. (And thanks to the fact that none of the characters really have names, I won’t be able to match all of the performers up with the roles, but I’m guessing from credits placement that this is Hideo Sakaki.)

“Boogah!”

Flash forward a few hundred years to a couple of escaped prisoners running through the same woods. The one with the bad hair is the on who arranged the escape, but the other one is the fellow we really want to concentrate on. You know he’s important because he’s the only one with a character name: Prisoner KSC2-303 (Tak Sakaguchi). But there’s no way in hell I’m going to call him that all through the review, so we’ll just call him the Prisoner. He’s got that bad-ass, pretty-boy, too-cool-to-be-anything-but-bored vibe going on. And I’ve got more hyphens where those came from.

Their rendez-vous is with a quartet of gangsters, appropriate to the ever-so-swank soundtrack at this point (and all character names are mine):

• The Joker, a flamboyant giggling hipster who considers the whole thing his own personal ruthless amusement.
• Longhair, whose straight coiffure and glasses betoken a businesslike approach to his profession.
• Tough Guy, with a straight ponytail and a sleeveless shirt showing off well-muscled shoulders.
• Shaggy — not because his hair is especially long or ill-kempt, but because he reminded me of the Scooby-Doo character turned to a life of crime.

There’s also their nominal on-site leader in basic bad black, but don’t get too attached to him.

“I’m… too sexy for the dead… too sexy for the dead…”

This throng is on orders from their mysterious boss to make sure that the escapees stay there until he arrives, especially the Prisoner. They also have a girl (Chieko Misaka or, as I call her, “the Girl”) along against her will, and that’s where the Prisoner gets a little less bored and a little more interested. He’s got a thing against the maltreatment of women, especially by self-important punks. So mainly because they piss him off, he protects the girl and in the course of making himself heard, the bad black leader gets shot.

If there’s one thing that the movie has impressed up to this point (and will maintain until the end), it’s that the whole thing is so… so… male. The presence of the girl, unlike the rest of the badasses, just points up the testosterone levels all around her by contrast. From the posturing fashions and behavioral affectations, to the constant undercurrent of contested Alpha Male status between each individual, to the inevitable use of big guns and swords, this is a guy flick the likes of which one rarely sees.

But it’s also a zombie flick, remember, and that enters the scene right about now, as the bad black leader comes back to his feet. Suddenly other differences are forgotten as everyone fills him with lead, eventually incapacitating him more by bodily attrition than any particularly lethal shot. The Joker find that so intriguing, he shoots the bad-hair prisoner through the head and waits just to see what will happen. Yup; he also revives and has to be put down.

“You know, I’ve always had this thing for girls with bad acne…”

In all of the gunsmoke, the Prisoner and the Girl make it off into the woods. Now, you may think that a entire movie spent essentially chasing around in the woods might seem cheap and confined. Well, it probably WAS cheap (shooting an entire feature in two acres of woodland does wonders for location costs), but it doesn’t feel at all confined. Near-perfect cinematography and editing keep it from seeming like a cost-cutting measure and instead make the setting perfect for a confrontation between a bunch o’guns and the living dead.

Not just any living dead, mind you. See, the gangster punks have been using this locale as a convenient disposal site for their previous victims. So they suddenly find themselves surrounded by scores of zombies — and since the dead were often buried with their own small arms, we’ve got zombies with guns!

Shucks, my description won’t do it justice (which is why film is a different medium, duh — if hypertext could faithfully reproduce the effect of cinema, I think people’d do it the cheap way, with NotePad and some webspace), but trust me: You never knew that a huge forest battle between gun-wielding living dead and equally-armed, fu-fighting gangsters could be this much fun.

I think this is the first time I’ve ever displayed a screencap solely for the subtitle.

Yes, there eventually is a plot. It involves the bug-eyed guy from the intro scene (he’s the mysterious boss, natch), reincarnation, and a scheme to tap the power of the gateway to the other world. And yeah, it’s nice to have a plot along for the ride. But it’s almost completely subsumed in the minute-to-minute spectacle of the stylized combat and mayhem. The fight choreography’s tight enough to bounce a quarter off, with judicious wirework and plenty of hyperbolic flourishes and flips, and the perfect mix of gunplay, empty-handed scuffles, and energetic swordplay. (The final fight had me saying, “THIS is what should have happened at the end of every Highlander episode!”)

Granted, there is a downside to the ephemeral plot: it’s a lot harder to retain the effect of the movie in memory, as so much of its impact comes from the visceral immediacy of the barrage of imagery. But the good news is that you can watch it again. And you know what? I can’t imagine it would lose any of its enjoyable energy the second time around.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 14
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 4
• dream sequences: 0
• ominous thunderstorms: 1
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0