Sky High

[Chevalier Bayard]

Tonight I've watched a dvd offered by Nau: Sky High from Ryuhei Kitamura who directed it the year before Godzilla: Final Wars a movie I once again urge you to find and watch (and then post in this far too empty topic ...)

Sky High (2003)
Director: Ryuhei Kitamura
Genre: Fantasy / Mystery / Action / Horror
Runtime: Japan: 122 min
Country: Japan
Language: Japanese
Color: Color
Certification:

Cast:
Yumiko Shaku ... Mina Saeki/Izuko (new Izuko)
Takao Osawa ... Tatsuya Kudo
Shosuke Tanihara ... Kohei Kanzaki
 (more)

Sky High is the cinema adaptation of a manga by Tsutomu Takahashi.



The manga has first been adapted for TV in a two seasons serie starring Yumiko Shaku as Izuko, the gardian of the Gate Of Rage.

This movie is a prequel to the serie where are explained Izuko's origins.



We then find Yumiko Shaku in the role of Mina Saeki, a young woman about to marry detective Kohei Kanzaki (Shosuke Tanihara).

Kanzaki on his side his working on a strange case of murders where women are found "staged" in lugubrious scenes. Each time the murderer has taken her heart to his victim.

Sadly, the wedding and the murder inquiry cross as Mina Saeki is the 4th victim and is murdered just before joining her to-become husband.



Instead she finds herself in front of the Gate of Rage where go all murdered people as Izuko, the guardian, explains her. Here she's given the choice between tree possibilities:

• passing through her rage and choosing to forget, going to Paradise and being reincarnate later,
• haunting forever Earth as a ghost,
• cursing her murderer to death and, therefore, going to Hell after.

Mina has twelve days to make her mind during which she follows the step of Kanzaki who obsessed to find the murderer of his wife, progresses in his inquiry which drives him in a new word where death is not the end of all things.



And here I've given you a synthesis of the first part of the movie which, sadly I've found the best. Because the following goes quite weird, as we could expect him from Ryuhei Kitamura which has never been a very good actors director and often has to deal with rythm problems.

But one thing for sure is that we couldn't expect so poorly directed action scenes from the director of Versus and Azumi.

It really seems there has been no repetition at all for the choreography and that the actors are improvising live. Anyway all except  Yumiko Shaku seem to be annoyed on the set where the general acting quality is pretty bad...



But, but, but ... I was very surprised to see that Liewen who was at first not very motivated to see the movie and was playing with the Nintendo DS at the beginning was finally totally caught by the movie.

While I was quite boring at the end of the movie, she was actually crying, ... for real !!!

I think she'll add a note here but she has been very captivated by the movie which is quite unexpected. Maybe that explains why I've not been caught, I was just not the target

Anyway, despite its disappointing defaults I was far to have a bad time watching Sky High and grant it a good 3/6 and invite you more than ever to see Godzilla: Final Wars

Chevvie