Gantz (2010) Reviews

• What a great surprise!!!

  eduardo-peixoto2011-02-16

  I did not read the manga, but I did watch the entire anime a few years back. The anime had 2 full seasons to tell the story, the movie had just two hours. So clearly while it is not as rich as the anime, the movie does a very good job given the time restriction. I had no expectations when I started to watch it, however after 15 minutes I was a believer, and even if I didn't know the story, still a pretty decent movie. Very nice FX and a high quality production to it. As fiction flicks goes, it is not for everybody, but If you like the theme and/or anime/manga culture, go for it for sure. And the sequel is already in the works, so we will get our Gantz fix soon enough.

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• I shouted "shoot" 'till I got hoarse....

  goranbr2012-03-25

  This movie started out so good, it was almost criminal it turned out to be such completely unbelievable crap in the end. The basic premise was good, for this kind of movie that is: 1. A bunch of guys die for several reasons. 2. The end up in a room with a mysterious black globe. 3. The globe gives them missions to kill UFOs residing in Japan. Hinting that they may redeem their lives this way. 4. They are given suitcases with black suits and cool sci-fi guns. 5. They are attacked by vicious UFOs. So any person equipped with more than two brain cells would have: 1. Donned the suit. 2. Quickly checked out the weapon and got ready for the mission. 3. You wanna get your life back, right? This far into the movie, I expected they would, I was eager for what was to come. This could be great! Then they are magically "lasered" away to someplace in Tokyo and the UFO guy is not late to show up. Well not to spoil what happens too much, they are completely unprepared for the mission. And why? 1. They have completely failed to put on their cool black suits. OK, they girl has put it on. And looks good in it! 2. They have completely failed to check out their cool weapons. Not to to spoil the movie, if there is anything to spoil, let me say this as a reality check: 1. If I knew I had died and had a chance to redeem my life by carrying out a mission, I would be sure to use any equipment given me. 2. If a monster was attacking me or my fellow undead, I would be sure to shoot first and ask questions later. Out of pure survival instinct. 3. If a monster was beating the crap out of one of my friends, then, even if I had no gun, I would do something to help out, lest I live in shame for the rest of my life. 4. If I was a hopeless nerd like most of the guys in the movie, and a cool beautiful girl showed interest in me, I would at least talk to her. The guys in this movie, though, fail on all these basic point of normal behaviour. They are all prize-winning village idiots, almost autistic in their passiveness, hopelessly asocial towards the beautiful girls that seem to like these idiots, egoistic, craven individuals who can't use a weapon or even throw a stick at a monster in order to save their own or other people's lives. They lack the most basic survival instincts or humanity. As a result, I spent most of the movie shouting "FOR THE LOVE GOD MAN, SHOOT, SHOOT, SHOOT!!" I'm not a trigger-happy man in normal situations... But with vicious UFOs attacking me, come and get some! :-)

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• Great Adaptation of the Anime

  eplanti2011-02-18

  I actually don't like film adaptations of anime, there's something crazy about trying to follow a series that's roughly 12 hours in length down to a suitable movie format of 1.5 to 3 hrs. What surprised me about the film adaptation of Gantz, is how well they adapted the idea of getting transported to a room relentlessly by a alien sphere to fight aliens shortly after your own death, instead of simply trying trying to mash the plot into a shorter format. They kept most of the aliens, but changed a lot to the series which is pretty refreshing after it had been out for five years. Also, the film is just as brutal and violent as it is in the anime, maybe even more so with the film's added realism.

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• Better than expected, I still liked the anime better

  book-nc2011-02-16

  I'm a fan of the original anime, though I never got around to actually reading the manga. I loved the brutality and tragedy of the original anime, so this movie had quite a different feel to it overall. I liked the changes they made to adapt the story to a movie. There was a lot of back story with the characters that had to be ignored or compressed, but when you're focusing on 2-3 characters in 2 hours, that is to be expected. Overall I liked the special effects, the casting was pretty good, and although I'm not sure about the changes in the ending they made, i'm OK with what they've done to make this into an interesting sci-fi movie that is worth watching.

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• A Nutshell Review: Gantz

  DICK STEEL2011-05-14

  If you think that only Hollywood is tapping deep into comic book source material for its films, well they're not alone, with the Japanese also digging deep into its rich manga culture for adaptations to bring to the silver screen. It's taken Gantz quite some time to reach our shores given that the concluding sequel had already been aired weeks ago and we're only getting the first installment, but as I say it's always better late than never. Based upon the original works by Hiroya Oku, Gantz is a science fiction fantasy film that posed a lot more questions than it answered, and really asks that you put aside nagging thoughts and accept things for what they are at face value until the second film rolls along. We're introduced to the teenagers Masaru Kato (the popular Kenichi Matsuyama) and Kei Kurono (Kazunari Ninomiya) who meet by chance at a subway station, once best friends with the latter always standing up for the former. They get involved in rescuing a man who had fallen onto the train tracks, but in the process get themselves killed, yet transported into some sparse apartment room together with strangers, all of whom had their life expired, and a huge black orb to whom they owe their temporal lives to. Here's where a lot of questions get tossed up as to the origins of the orb, and some thick existential queries - are they really dead, or operating on a separate limbo plane, or are really just dreaming - but put all of these aside to just soak up the ground rules that the characters have to engage in, and the set action sequences that come with the territory. To help make the narrative a little bit more palatable, treat it as an extreme version of Men in Black, where a randomly selected group of apparently dead folks get topped up into an existing team, all of whom are given exo-skeleton suits to power up and weapons fit to kill aliens who walk this earth. Gantz, the orb within which houses a comatosed bald man communicating via a console on the orb, summons the players, sets the mission objectives, and teleports them into the thick of the action. Survive, and you get to live another day. Die, and you'll stay dead permanently. With a catch of course, where a Gantz summoned player earn meagre points in a mission (in addition to getting insulted), and a 100 points allows one to either wipe one's memory and go back to the "real world" not remembering a single thing when serving Gantz, or opting to resurrect a fallen comrade. The first hour or so is spent learning the ground rules, and what better way than to be thrown into the deep end of the pool in an effort to immerse both the characters and audience in double quick time. Our main protagonists with their different perspectives and values often come up clashing against once another in their ideals, but when push comes to shove it's a life and death issue should they choose not to cooperate with each other, and with others in the same boat, unless of course one decides to use the clueless newbies as fodder. The story's made more interesting with this particular contrast between the two leads, one being very reluctant to shed more blood and taking it upon himself to ensure that the newbies are properly briefed and told of the risks involved, often being ridiculed, while the other sees his new life under Gantz as an opportunity to rise up and be the hero he's meant to be, since in real life he's a zero this presents him a chance to answer what would be his calling in life, bordering on arrogance and partaking in riskier maneuvers. But alas given the need to cram everything into a slightly more than two hour film, you can bet that plenty of characterization and development got thrown out of the window, and subplot casualties include the romances between Kato and buxomy Kei Kishimoto (Natsuna Watanabe), and that of Kurono and fellow student and manga enthusiast Tae Kojima (Yuriko Yoshitaka), whom I suspect will have a much larger role in the concluding film. Surprisingly there is plenty of bloody violence and gore peppered throughout the film, sticking close to the treatment as in the manga and anime, with only the gratuitous nudity in the source materials being toned down by quite a bit in the live action movie. Computer generated graphics are the order of the day, as plenty of futuristic weapons got produced, in addition to the skin tight exo-skeleton suit. Villainous aliens take on different looks, from robots with awkward mobility, to inhabiting statues of Buddhas that give rise to one of the largest action sequences in the film that came complete with high casualty and property damage. Undoubtedly a special effects extravaganza, Gantz is ultimately half a film, and I am looking forward to the concluding episode to wrap up the open questions posed here. After all, the sequel's subtitle is Perfect Answer, so I'm really hoping for that to happen. Stay tuned during and after the closing credits for that trailer to the sequel, and tell me if that doesn't pique your interest even more, so much so that like me I'm putting that anime DVD collection on my wish list. Recommended!

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