VERSUS is quite simply an insane film. To try to describe it is going to take some effort, and you probably still won’t have much of an idea how crazed this film is. Imagine the opening and closing reels of Miike’s D.O.A. expanded to a two hour film that never (well, almost never) lets up, not for a minute. I remember reading somewhere that Miike wanted to make the “most violent film ever made” at some point in the future. Well, Kitamura has already beaten him to it!

The film opens with a samurai warrior cutting someone in two. We see that he is surrounded by shambling, rotting samurai who are obviously zombies. In exaggerated, true samurai style he flourishes his sword and proceeds to cut them all to pieces. However, a mysterious shaman-like figure watches him, and challenges him. The samurai rushes towards the mystic, who cuts him in half in one swipe, his hand only leaving his staff for brief seconds to perform the blow. This sequence doesn’t really have anything to do with the film that follows, though the shaman (and the zombies) all feature later on.

Now the film proper starts. Two guys are wandering through a forest. They’re obviously escaped prisoners, due to their giveaway clothing and handcuffs! They meet up with a group of five yakuza, who arrive in a car and a motorbike. The meeting is tense, and the yakuza speak of someone who they have to wait for. All of the yakuza seem manic, whilst one of them is particularly so (played very camp by Kenji Matsuda). They have a girl held prisoner (the lovely Chieko Masaka), and one of the escapees (played by Tak Sakaguchi; I’ll refer to him as the hero from now on – none of the characters in this film are given names) becomes angry, telling them to let her go. They refuse and ask him why he cares. “I’m a feminist” he tells them, before grabbing the closest yakuza and shooting the yakuza’s leader dead. A tense standoff follows, but then the yakuza boss suddenly rises up off the ground, grabbing the nearest yakuza to him and biting him. The others all start shooting at him, and after about 500 shots have been fired (literally!), he finally dies again. The boss’ deputy, the most unhinged of the yakuza, then takes the opportunity to shoot the second of the escapees in the head. He too then returns from the dead before being despatched in a hail of bullets. The hero escapes with the girl into the forest, and one of the yakuza follows. There then follows a demented fight, and it becomes apparent that the hero is practically invincible. He can move impossibly fast and perform all sorts of martial arts. The fight is in true comic book style, but very violent. Lots of zombies also enter the melée and the fight becomes three way. We switch back to the other yakuza who are debating over what to do, and why the dead are returning to life. One of the yakuza becomes hysterical, realising that all the yakuza that they have murdered and buried in the woods in the past could also return to life… which of course they do. And they have guns. And they can do martial arts. Cue another mind-blowing fight. We switch back to the hero and the girl, who find a corpse with a cool looking leather mac, which the hero dons. The girl is strangely calm, and tells the hero that he can’t just “kill people for no reason” (the fact that the yakuza had kidnapped her and beaten her up doesn’t seem to count as a reason). The girl can’t remember anything about her life up to the point when she arrived at the forest. Neither can the hero.

The above summation takes us to about 1/4 way through the film. By this point I was feeling literally dazed, and the pace does let up a little for the rest of the film. Now, some more yakuza (including a cool female) turn up, followed by the person who the yakuza have been awaiting. It soon becomes apparent that this guy is very evil, and probably Satan himself (played by Hideo Sakaki). The yakuza had planned to murder him, but of course you can’t kill the devil that easily. He turns most of them into zombies, before sending them out to retrieve the girl and our hero. At this point, the film becomes mostly a series of set-piece fights; some gun battles, some martial arts fights and some mixes of the two. We learn that the devil wants the girl to sacrifice, in order to open a gateway to the ‘other side’. He has already tried once before, 500 years earlier, but was defeated when our hero (then a samurai warrior) decapitated her before he could get her. He has had to wait for her to reincarnate, and this time he doesn’t want to fail. Also thrown into the mix are two completely bizarre prison wardens who are hunting the escapees. These guys have their own silly signature music, and provide some light relief (well, very black relief actually, but who’s quibbling?) One of the wardens is missing a hand (he just has a bloody stump) and it becomes apparent that he was handcuffed to our hero, which explains a strange moment at the opening of the film when we first meet the two escapees; our hero is covered in blood and tosses what appears to be a hand away into the undergrowth. Eventually, the girl is captured and an almighty duel begins between the devil and the hero. Who wins? Well, you’ll have to see the film to find out.

None of the above really serves as any indication of the sheer energy that this film exudes from every frame. That’s why I mentioned Miike at the start of this review as he is the only director I can think of who can get the same level of intensity into each shot he films. However, Kitamura’s style is very different to Miike’s. This is his debut feature film, and he obviously didn’t feel any need to show any restraint whatsoever when filming it – the camera never stays still for a second, constantly moving around the characters. Even when they’re standing still, it’s rotating round them or performing frantic zooms back and forth. The end result is extremely dizzying yet at the same time manages to convey such a sense of pace and frenetic, pulse-pounding action that it’s impossible not to be impressed. I can’t think of any other film that compares in terms of camera activity, and it must have taken forever to choreograph the camera movements in the fight scenes.

The most obvious comparison that can be made between this film and another is with THE MATRIX. I’ve thought for a while that Japan seems to have been very impressed by this film, and you can catch glimpses of it in pretty much all Hollywood films now (just look at something like CHARLIE’S ANGELS), as well as in the great CGI cockfight sequence in Miike’s CITY OF LOST SOULS. The pace and style of the fight sequences in this film are very reminiscent of THE MATRIX, and the way in which they are filmed is also very similar, though notched up several degrees. However, Kitamura is quite happy to admit the debt he owes the Wachowski Bros – right from the moment that the hero dons his long black leather coat, he throws in constant references to the other film – at one point the hero gets hold of a pair of Neo-esque sunglasses which he dons, much to the girl’s disapproval. The female yakuza looks like Trinity. There’s a hilarious scene involving the much-aped “character leaning impossibly far backwards to avoid a bullet” move. There’s lots more too. All of this only adds to the feeling of fun and exuberance that Kitamura manages to convey. There’s really a lot of humour in this film, as well as a nice, innocent love story between the two leads.

VERSUS does differ from THE MATRIX in one important aspect though – gore. This is almost certainly the most violent film I’ve ever seen – yes, BRAINDEAD is probably gorier, yes Olaf Ittenbach’s films are probably gorier, yes STORY OF RICKY is just as gory in a goofy way. However, this film has much higher production values than any of those films, and also much more effective fx work. The blood and bullets used in this film must have taken up half the film’s budget, at least. Every fight and gore scene is filmed with gleeful excess by Kitamura, and one quickly loses track of the number of different methods by which people are despatched. Big holes are shot through heads and bodies (the camera zooming into or right through them). Heads are chopped off. A guy punches right through a zombie’s head, and when he pulls his hand out the eyeballs are stuck between his fingers. Etc. Etc. In theory these scenes could be offensive, but it’s impossible to take offence thanks to the style in which they’re filmed, and the sheer, complete lack of realism in the fights. Characters move faster than the eye can follow, fights go on for ever, people shoot with three guns at once (the guns get bigger and bigger, until they become ridiculous), no-one really seems in pain or frightened, literally thousands of bullets are fired from hundreds of guns, but we never see any reference to ammunition, etc. It really says something that a first-time Japanese director can take a few actors, a lot of fx and bullets, some handheld cameras and make what is probably the ultimate action film on a budget that was a fraction of THE MATRIX’s.

The other two big plus points the film has are its forest setting and its incredible score. The forest is used to great effect and is very reminiscent of KICHIKU, with its tall, close together, thin trees, shot from below to give a menacing skyline. The music is simply brilliant – a deafening selection of industrial strength rock/techno used to great effect in the fight scenes - and really does add to the energy and atmosphere of the film. This really is a film that should be played loud! My one complaint would be that it does start to drag a bit by the 90 minute mark and could have done with some editing. That said, I bet Kitamura had to cut all sorts out of the film to get it to the two hour mark, as one can imagine quite easily the reels of film that were probably shot for the fight sequences. Also, there's an odd short futuristic scene tacked on to the end of the film that doesn't seem to make much sense and doesn't really work, though perhaps it's setting the scene for a sequel...

Does the film make any meaningful point? Not really. Does it leave the viewer stunned, dazed and open-mouthed? Certainly. Will we be seeing a lot more from Kitamura in the future? You can absolutely bet on it.

Cast:
Tak Sakaguchi
Hideo Sakaki
Chieko Misaka
Kenji Matsuda
Yuichiro Arai
Minoru Matsumoto
Kazuhito Ohba
Takehiro Katayama
Ayumi Yorihara