Azumi (2003) - 2 Disc Collector's Edition

Movie

Rating: R
Length: 128 minutes

Video

Widescreen 1.85:1 Color (Anamorphic)

Audio

ENGLISH: Dolby Digital 5.1
JAPANESE: Dolby Digital 5.1

Captions

English

Purchase

Plot

It's feudal Japan and ten young children are taken and trained to be assassins. Their mission is to help end the fighting by killing the leaders that promote discourse. The movie quickly fast-forwards to the end of their training so they can now start their mission.

Pros

You will not be bogged down with a deep and confusing storyline; everything here is fairly basic. If you do not like subtitles the dubbing for this film was really well done (if you want to see how, it's in the extras). Last, but certainly not least, is the very lovely and extremely talented Aya Ueto in the lead role; her facial expressions leave no doubt about what's going on in her mind throughout the film. I looked up her age (she was 18 at the time of the filming) after the movie and, if there was any doubt before, it's gone now; I'm a dirty old man.

Cons

The fight scenes tended to run forever and there are quite a few of them. And why are the really bad people so often portrayed as androgynous?

Extras

"Fighting on the Edge": The Making of Azumi
"The Battle of the Creators": Kitamura vs. Yamamoto
"About the Actors" Featurette
Cast & Crew Profiles
Hidden Music Video

Recommendation

This is a really fun film if you like Asian sword films. I felt it could have been trimmed down a little, but it does a good job to hold your attention if for no other reason than to watch Azumi kill so many people while looking so good; the body count in this film makes the Rambo films look weak. :-)