Mike King

Returner

April 13, 2004 on 10:51 am | In Movies and TV | Comments Off

What do you get when you mix The Terminator, E.T., and The Matrix? You might get something like Returner, a Japanese live-action film released on DVD earlier this year.

Basic plot: The year is 2084 and Earth is at war with the Daggra, a mysterious race of aliens. A girl goes back in time to the year 2002 to prevent the war from happening. She meets a hitman, whom she coerces into helping her.

I had fun watching this movie. Be warned that it’s over the top and cheesy, so be in the right mood should you decide to watch it. The story is mostly predictable, but still entertaining. They won’t win any awards for originality, but the characters and details of the tale were engaging enough to have kept me watching.

I was surprised to find that the movie mixed Japanese, Chinese, and English throughout.
In the future, everyone speaks English, but you kind of wish they wouldn’t. Because everyone suddenly enunciates every word very carefully — even during a tense gun battle.

The cinematography is beautiful and the visual effects are done really well for the budget. The CG is easily better than most stuff we see on T.V., and as good or better than some major Hollywood releases. I’d place the quality somehwere in Battlefield Earth territory, but with much cooler flair. The Japanese love of design and style push these FX beyond the quality of execution.

The characters never quite break out of their stereotypes, which is a shame, but sometimes they come close. The action sequences are fun, well-choreographed, and they pull of some nice gun-fu.

Returner is anime done with live-action, right down to the psychotic bad guy with the funny colored spiky hair.

And I am curious what the budget was. Cause in the U.S., this would probably be a $30 million movie, even if someone like Robert Rodriguez made it.