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Returner Actors: Takeshi Kaneshiro, Anne Suzuki, Goro Kishitani Director: Takashi Yamazaki Number of Items: 1 Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen Format: Color, Widescreen, Digital Video Transfer, Surround Sound, Subtitled, Digital Sound Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Running Time: 116 minutes Studio: Columbia Tristar Hom Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Region Code: 1 Product Group: DVD Release Date: 2004-09-07 Buy from Amazon |
 "Definitely worth watching."This sci-fi, action, alien, crime, time travel, revenge and redemption film is hard to describe. It does combine visuals we've seen before (including anime-like cinematography), but manages to pull off a refreshing, unique "feel". Takeshi Kaneshiro gives a nuanced, engaging performance which Anne Suzuki complements with her witty innocence and strength. Their characters, with their individual stories and converging goals, form an alliance to resolve his tragedy of the past and her tragedy of the future. Their scenes of explanation and motive drive the film (and imbue it with its considerable charm), rather than serving as mere rest periods between the clever action sequences and special effects. "Cry all you want fanatics!"Add elements of The Matrix, Independence Day, and The Terminator; now, subtract the suck from that equation and you get Returner. No one does wire work and fight choreography like the japanese and chinese. I wish the leech known as Hollywood would stop thinking they can do it even slightly well. Returner is fun and yes it may be unoriginal as most everyone has and will say of it's plot, but as a comic nerd I know how much of a rip off the Matrix is no matter how many droolians will nay say. Do yourself a favor: You like action, you like sci-fi; check Retuner out. Otherwise, watch some hollywood garbage and slowly die inside. "Plenty of entertainment value"This is not a very deep movie, but if you want to see a fun sci-fi adventure, this would be a good choice. The movie's treatment of time travel (especially the little flashback at the end that explained some subtleties) was more rewarding than its treatment of the aliens. Questions about who the aliens were or why they came in the first place were not even addressed. There was considerable violence, including against kids, so this is not a family movie. But for adults, I would definitely recommend a rental, and if you're a real sci-fi fan, go ahead an buy with confidence. You won't regret it.  "Medicority at its Best"Renting foreign movies is usually a hit or miss experience. I try to stick with genres countries are known for HK=action, martial arts; Japan=Anime, horror, Korea= well Korean maybe the exception. I have seen a good comedy, action, and a crime drama from there. This time it was a perfectly average experience. The movie is a blender of the E.T., Matrix, ID4, Terminator and Back to the Future. Nothing original, everything is exactly mediocre and rehashed. The wire work is OK, the gunplay pretty good, the acting bad to mediocre. The bad part is the dubbed English or were they real American actors? Those scenes were on par in acting and set design as Stargate SG-1 TV or Andromeda. There are a few funny moments to break the rhythm. The end was a little unexpected, but (don't hate me) just does not seem plausible even in movieland. VIDEO: The DVD was watched in widescreen mode. The transfer looks good with no cross coloration. SOUND: It made good use of 5.1 DD sound. The voices and effects were clear and traveled among the speakers without any breaks. EXTRAS: This is the best part of the DVD. They show a split screen of before and after shots of special effects. For example they have the actual shot with actors/actress in front of a blue screen, then show the actual movie part on the bottom half. This was pretty cool. This was actually clear. On some DVDs these scenes look like home movies. www.xanga.com/Rander  "Better than the first Matrix!!!"At first judgement at the box art, you would think that this was just another dumb "shoot-em-up" movie. A movie with a lot of silly action and no story-line. FORTUNEATLY, The Returner is not that kind of movie. It has a very interesting storyline, with two surprising twists at the end that will really shock you. This is a very good quality movie. And yes my review title is correct......its better than the first Matrix!!! |
