Casshern.:

I have to admit that I'm slow. In my defence, I was never mature enough to actually be interested in Japanese movies, simply because they were too abstract and complexed for me. Back then, I was more into movies like 50 First Dates, Starsky & Hutch, Van Helsing, Troy, The Day After Tomorrow, you know, mainstream Hollywood production.

I only started getting into 'weird', 'mindfucking' and abstract movies somewhere around last year. Therefore, I missed Casshern when it first opened in Singapore. Ironically enough, I had quite a strong urge to catch this movie, because it was Japanese, based on an anime and there was a 'superhero' involved. Not to mention the poster they put up at Cineleisure was nicely done (see on above).

To be honest, I'm not really sure if it's based on an anime, but after much research online (where else is the best place to do it?), courtesy of Wikipedia.com , I found out that the original run for this anime was in 1973. Eleven years before my actual existence.

31 years later, this masterpiece was born. I am pretty sure that the original anime was nowhere near as artistic as this live action version and neither do I know how faithful this version is, but they did an ode to the original helmet design for Casshern in the movie.

The entire movie ran pretty long, almost 2 1/2 hours. This movie is definitely epic. The vision was excellent, the movie was well explained at the end (and it wasn't that difficult to figure out) and there were plenty of beautiful scenes that involved great emotions clashing.

The fight scenes were awesome. My only gripe is that there were only 2 major fight scenes. There were a few actually, but there was this one scene that merely consisted of an Iaijutsu scene on top of a flight of stairs and the other one cannot be considered a fight scene because I could not make anything out; everything was moving at breakneck speed. But that was probably the whole idea, and you'd get it if you already know how that scene ended.

Years ago, I would switch this off halfway because it's too slow and I probably won't understand the fucking slow scenes. And when I say fucking slow, I really mean fucking slow. Why do you think the movie is 2 1/2 hours?

If you're in it for the action, you won't be disappointed. Problem is, I don't think the action sequences are enough for you to think that it's worth it. I say, rent a DVD and fast forward to those scenes. Then return it an hour later.

This movie is full of emotion and some scenes will make you cry and move you. So, if you don't, then you're emotionless and should probably go to hell. Or you're still a kid. Either ways, you should go to hell.

P.S.: The reason I'm not asleep yet, in case you were looking at the time on this post and wondering, "why the fuck is he still awake?", is because I've slept too long this past weekend and I'm sure I'm going to sleep until like 12pm or 1pm the next day.

Which of course, I'm trying to avoid. It's a bad habit and I don't want any of that. So I'm planning to reset my body clock by not sleeping this whole night and then sleeping early on Monday night, so that I will be waking up early on Tuesday morning.

I don't know if it'll work, but I'll keep you posted.