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Tak Sakaguchi, Hideo Sakaki, Chieko Misaka, Kenji Matsuda

Evil Dead 2 meets Street Fighter by way of The Matrix in this wild and woolly zombie/yakuza/samurai/kung fu/splatter flick directed by Ryuhei Kitamura. Throughout the world there are 666 portals to th... read more read more...e other side; the 444th is Japan and is called the Forest of Resurrection, where good has battled evil for time immemorial. The film opens with prisoner KSC2-303 (Tak Sakaguchi) and his fellow cellmate escaping a maximum-security prison and ending up in the forest where they are supposedly to be picked up by a band of gangsters in a shiny Mercedes and taken to a safer place. Instead, the gangsters try to use them and a female hostage (Chieko Misaka) as pawns in a larger power struggle. A gunfight ensues killing KSC2-303's colleague and the mob boss, but just as the standoff is about to yield more violence, an odd thing happens -- the dead get up and attack the living. In the chaos, KSC2-303 and girl disappear into the forest with a band of slickly coifed yakuza in hot pursuit. High-kicks, machine guns, and rampant disembowelments ensue. This film was screened at the 2001 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

Flixster Users

55% want to see it

18,686 ratings

Critics

67% liked it

12 critics

R, 1 hr. 59 min.

Directed by: Ryuhei Kitamura

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DVD Release Date: July 29, 2003

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Flixster Reviews (1,598)

  • phubbs1
    February 26, 2012
    phubbs1
    Rather bizarre film which I didn't really understand until the gone the midway point to be honest, the plot is odd and not entirely explained as you are spoon fed bits of it very slowly.

    Its a blend of horror, comedy, sci-fi and fantasy really, almost has an 'Evil Dead' quality ... read moreto it really, that kind of dark humour with over the top extreme characters. Mix that with a kind of 'Mortal Kombat' style plot about opening portals to other worlds which lie within the "Forest of Resurrection" but only with the blood of a certain woman etc...a bit cliched but fun.

    The whole thing is highly stylised like all Japanese action films...its slicker than a frogs bathing suit, the main hero has dark longish hair and a full length black leather trench coat with black leather pants, dare I say looking a bit 'Crow' like. There's plenty of martial arts, sword play and clever editing along with unique camera angles, personally I think there has been an element of 'The Matrix' borrowed for this film hehe well that and quite a few other films.

    Its well known as a cult but I wasn't overly stunned by it, its cool but nothing special really, a bit too cliched for me.
  • skactopus
    October 27, 2011
    skactopus
    Ryuhei Kitamura's style goes a long way, and Versus has plenty of it.

    The plot is definitely light for a film with nearly a 2 hour run time; however, despite this along with its low budget and lack of multiple settings, the sci-fi fantasy concept, wacky characters, and s

    ... read moretylized action keep things afloat from beginning to end.

    When all is said and done, the action is the most memorable piece of this picture. Whether it be the plethora of guns, hand to hand combat, or swordplay, it all stands out because of its unique choreography. The lengthy and highly entertaining finale of a fight contains unique swords for both of the leads.

    Tak Sakaguchi thrives more on his action than acting, but in a film where characters have no names, it all works out. Hideo Sakaki is a confident and effective villain. Minoru Matsumoto and Kenji Matsuda are the over-actors of the bunch and they just barely stay under the level of annoyance.

    Versus is an action film that can be viewed as a cult classic. Zombies with guns anyone?
  • lewiskendell
    February 16, 2011
    lewiskendell
    Versus aims to be a stylish, cool action flick with a healthy mixture of gore, gun-play, and martial arts.

    Unfortunately, a lot of those attempts at being stylish and cool, end up coming off as cheesy. All the silly posing and failed attempts at humor don't do a lot to help Ver... read moresus, and neither does the fact that the characters are almost universally annoying and uninteresting.

    The story is something about zombies and resurrection forests and portals to hell. The word "convoluted" comes to mind. The frequent action scenes could have been the movie's saving grace, but they were uniformly uninspired and routine. The gore wasn't funny or copious enough to warrant any attention.

    The acting is bad. Not "campy bad" or "hilariously bad", just bad. The kind that's difficult to watch.

    If you couldn't tell, I thoroughly disliked Versus. I've seen a lot of great Japanese action flicks. This wasn't one of them.
  • deano
    January 17, 2010
    deano
    Bullets, blades and blood fly in every direction with Hellenic zeal in the kung-fu-meets-zombie movie that is Versus. Before you can say Dawn of the Dead, zombies are stumbling all over the place, and to make matters worse an ancient ninja-demon with a score to sett... read morele gets in on the action as well. A relentless barrage of Splatstick ensues in this spirited but ultimately thin homage to the cinema of Sam Raimi, George Romero and John Carpenter - Japanese style.
  • ScoopOnline
    December 22, 2009
    ScoopOnline
    A Forest to Hell comes Alive with Death.
  • matertenebraum
    August 4, 2009
    matertenebraum
    The contribution that Japan has made to the world of screen violence can hardly be overstated, and in the 21st Century there seems to be a new renaissance of sheer bloodiness. Movies like BATTLE ROYALE, ICHI THE KILLER and VERSUS really set new standards for out and out shocking ... read moreviolence that I don't think any other country in the world has matched.

    VERSUS is basically all about action. The premise is a crazy one that involves kung-fu samurais re-incarnated as yakuza who then get turned into zombies and vampires. It's actually a very interesting and quite complex story in its own right, but basically it's an excuse to get a bunch of people in a forest and stage a fairly continuous sequence of hand to hand fights, sword fights and gun fights - with a supernatural angle to justify some HK style OTT acrobatics and an undead angle to justify people getting seriously messed up and still fighting on. Genius. Sick as all hell, but genius!

    These days, good action movies from Hong Kong are becoming increasingly rare. For years HK stood unchallenged and exported its unique cinematic arts throughout Asia. Since the talent or the investment or the will or whatever seems to have fled the HK industry in recent years, it seems like other Asian countries are stepping up to the challenge of filling the gap. Korea has produced movies like MUSA and MY WIFE IS A GANGSTER, Thailand has produced BANGKOK DANGEROUS and TAK 4, INDIA has produced AANKHEN and MISSION KASHMIR. Hollywood and Europe have had a go too, but with so little success overall it's hardly worth mentioning.

    VERSUS is clearly made by a small independant team who recognised that Hong Kong isn't going to produce the next jaw-dropping action movie any time soon, and who believed they had what it took to do it instead. It takes a lot of confidence and dedication to produce results like these on a clearly low budget, and Napalm Films must have had a lot of both. VERSUS attempts practically every type of action scene that Hong Kong has been famous for (and Japan traditionally has not), and pulls most of them off very well.

    There'd been such a lot of hype around VERSUS on the net for ages that I'd found myself instinctively hating it before I knew anything about it, but when I saw the trailer I was converted to enthusiasm. Seeing the wild disparity between the cool SHIRAYUKI HIME trailer and the dreadful full length movie gave me some trepidation about VERSUS, which is probably a good thing since at least I wasn't expecting something flawless. VERSUS is not flawless, but it's much much better than SHIRAYUKI HIME.

    The action scenes are not better than Hong Kong's best - they're not even nearly as good as some of the scenes in movies like MAGNIFICENT WARRIORS in fact, but they're imaginatively and enthusiastically staged and filmed. And violent! Oh so very very violent! The special effects are some of the most convincingly brutal I've seen. ICHI THE KILLER may have had more outrageous effects, but was never in danger of having convincing effects. BATTLE ROYALE may have had more realistic violence, but nothing like the sheer magnitude of the bodily damage people take in VERSUS! People get cut in half, lose limbs, have gaping holes blown through them... well, you know how much it takes to stop a zombie moving . It's all played fairly non-seriously, but not to the cartoonish extent of ICHI. It looks pretty damn real.

    Definitely not one for the squeamish, really not a family movie. But for the sick puppies out there who maintain an innocent curiosity as to just how violent a movie can be (like myself, I admit), VERSUS is definitely a must-see!
  • garyX
    November 4, 2008
    garyX
    A group of gangsters kidnap a girl and meet a pair of escaped convicts in the woods awaiting their boss for instructions. Little do they know that he's an unkillable demon who can re-animate the corpses of their dead victims...Well if that synopsis sounds ridiculous, it gets sill... read moreier than that! This is the kind of film where if it were done straight-faced, it probably would've been a disaster. Fortunately it has just the right amount of tongue in cheek humour to make it great fun. It has the same kind of mix of gore and laughs that the likes of A Chinese Ghost Story contains, and as a result comes across as a kind of Asian martial arts version of Evil Dead 2 or Peter Jackson's Bad Taste. Like those films, the budget was obviously tight, so you can spot some wires and there are a couple of ropey effects, but it's all part of the fun. Laugh at it or with it, it's an a musing bag of manga style lunacy and frenetic action that's basically just an excuse for constant fist fights, gun battles and samurai swords splattered with a liberal dose of gore. Unpretentious crowd pleasing nonsense.
  • DrBenway
    August 10, 2008
    DrBenway
    Action that will leave you dizzy along with good production are the main attractions to this mixed bag of zombies, martial-arts, guns, and gore. You don't actually care about the characters who are so poorly written because you are just bewildered by some amazing fight choreogra... read morephy and graphic gore. People fly through the air, kicking and chopping at everything they can or blasting everything that moves to pieces leaving blood, guts, spit and ass all over the woods.

    The only thing that stops the rating from being higher is the attempt to cram a plot in where it doesn't belong. Although some might get tired of this attempt and switch off after 60 minutes, it's still a fun mix of horror, humor and good old teeth breaking carnage
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  • DragonEyeMorrison
    April 17, 2008
    DragonEyeMorrison
    I was expecting a bit more from this one, Kitamura has some creative camera ideas but needs to get over the fact that he didn't directed "The Matrix" films.

    The film stretches way longer than it should, with long pauses of the two leads just standing around trying to look cool. ... read moreNot really worth all the cult following that it got.
  • EightThirty
    September 13, 2007
    EightThirty
    Versus is like a Movie Version of Devil May Cry ^_^n NICE!!!

View All Versus Reviews

Critic Reviews

Janice Page
June 27, 2003
Janice Page, Boston Globe

A major splatter fest. Full Review

Michael Wilmington
June 5, 2003
Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune

For a low-budget ghost-yakuza thriller, Versus is a fairly impressive achievement. Full Review

Ian Berriman
January 25, 2011
Ian Berriman, SFX Magazine

Being dumb is cool, dude, and Versus is as knowingly dumb as a three-chord thrash by The Ramones. Full Review

Nick Schager
September 5, 2006
Nick Schager, Lessons of Darkness

[Proves] the old adage about less being more. Full Review

Pablo Villaca
April 27, 2005
Pablo Villaca, Cinema em Cena

Como trash, tem seus bons momentos (especialmente aqueles protagonizados pelo exagerado - e divertido - Matsuda), mas abusa com sua montagem capenga e a longa duração.

Brian Mckay
November 16, 2003
Brian Mckay, eFilmCritic.com

while on many levels it is a poorly written, hammily acted, cheaply produced piece of crap - damn, it's got some good a** kicking! Full Review

Michael W. Phillips, Jr.
November 5, 2003
Michael W. Phillips, Jr., Goatdog's Movies

Mayhem, of a unique, frenetic, and almost crazily poetic kind. Full Review

Eric Campos
July 6, 2002
Eric Campos, Film Threat

If you don't have fun watching "Versus" then we're gonna have to break out the paddles on you. Full Review

Peter Travers
August 14, 2007
Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

No review available.

Emanuel Levy
October 1, 2005
Emanuel Levy, EmanuelLevy.Com

No review available.

Critic ratings and reviews powered by RottenTomatoes.com

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