Death Trance (2005)

Death Trance (2005)
Japanese Title: デス・トランス
Translation: Desu Toransu (Death Trance)

 

Starring: Tak Sakaguchi, Honoka Asada, Yoko Fujita, Kentaro Seagal, Ben Hiura, Takamasa Suga, Osamu Takahashi, Yuki Takeuchi, Hiroko Yashiki
Director: Yuji Shimomura
Action Directors: Tak Sakaguchi, Go Ohara

Continuations in film franchises come in one of two forms: the prequel and the sequel. The former is a bit less common and is infinitely more difficult to pull off effective. The reasons are many. For one, prequels, especially to horror films, are doomed from the start because you know how it’s going to end from square one. If your film is about the origin of the serial killer, like Leatherface, you know from the outset that a) Leatherface will live and b) the main characters will most likely not survive the ordeal. Second, if the purpose of the prequel is to provide a backstory to one or more characters in the franchise, bad writing decisions can ruin the character(s) in the minds of the franchise’s fans, much how Darth Vader went from being the Villain to Beat to Haydn Christiansen. Prequels can often contradict the plots of earlier films. For an exercise, try reconciling the events of the last two X-Men prequels with the events of the trilogy. Couldn’t do it, could you?

Sequels are much more common and easier to pull off. There are different ways to write a sequel. First, you can end the previous film on a cliffhanger and the sequel would simply pick up where the last film left off, like Night Watch and Day Watch. That can also be done sans the cliffhanger, like how Godzilla vs. Biollante starts off on the same night of the rampage depicted in Godzilla 1985. Some writers are content only to remake the first film, setting the film chronologically after the previous entry. Zeiram and Zeiram 2 are good examples of that phenomenon. A better approach would be to take a few base plot elements from the previous film and build something new on top of that, much like how Blade II kept the “war on vampires” idea, but then forced Blade to team up with his sworn foes in order to take on a much more powerful and dangerous entity. Once in a while, a sequel will be of a completely different genre. Compare the horror film The Cat People with the child fantasy sequel Curse of the Cat People.

There’s another sort of sequel that doesn’t get as much attention. That would be the so-called “spiritual sequel,” or “spiritual successor.” The movie is not a part of the franchise and has nothing overt in the plot to link it to its predecessor. However, a combination of parallel story elements, matching themes and messages, similarities in cast and crew, directing style, and other more superficial filmmaking aspects may create a kinship between two movies. It’s the sort of movie that makes you say, “That’s not a sequel, but it really could’ve been.” One of my favorite examples is Andrew Lau’s special FX quadrilogy that started with The Storm Riders and ended with Avenging Fist, especially The Storm Riders and film #2, A Man Called Hero. Both films were based on comic books, starred Ekin Cheng and had similar supporting casts (Anthony Wong, Shu Qi, etc.), and featured heavy CGI-enhanced swordplay action courtesy of overrated action director Dion Lam.

Such is also the case with Death Trance: it’s the spiritual successor to not one, but two movies with strong cult followings: Six-String Samurai and Versus. The former is a 1999 independent film made by a fellow named Lance Mungia and starring Hong Kong film veteran Jeffrey Falcon. It’s a high concept film, its story being summarized as “Buddy Holly journeys across the post-apocalyptic wasteland and fights Death in order to take Elvis Presley’s place as the King of Rock n’ Roll.” It’s a mixture of Japanese chambara films, Hong Kong kung fu films, and post-apocalyptic sci-fi films and is a very bizarre, yet entertaining movie. Versus, on the other hands, throwsHong Kong action, samurai cinema, Yakuza films, and zombie movies. It’s easily one of the most important Japanese cult movies of the new millennium, even more so now that Japanese cult cinema is composed of fan service T&A gore films that cynically throw numerous outrageous elements and fan service wank moments into a blender and hit the “purée” button.

So what’s Death Trance about?

In Japan in an unspecified year, or to be more precise, in some alternate universe/neo-feudalJapan, there’s a temple known as the East Temple. Housed in said religious sanctuary is a certain artifact rumored to have special powers. Some believe that the artifact, a coffin, will grant its possessor any wish he/she makes, if taken to the right place. Others, most specifically the monks who live at the temple, believe that the coffin is the key to an unleashing an apocalyptic event capable of destroying even the heavens themselves. I’m pretty sure that theory #2 explains is why it’s so heavily protected.

Unfortunately, the legion of monks guarding it are no match for Grave (Tak Sakaguchi, Versus and Battlefield Baseball), a wandering ronin-type with a reputation for being a child-eating monster. Grave invades the temple grounds and makes swift work of all the monks guarding the coffin, taking the magical object for himself. Accompanying Grave is a little girl in an oversized kimono (Honoka Asada), who never talks, but seems to enjoy the company of Grave, despite the fact that he often treats her as if she weren’t there. We’ll see in a little bit that she enjoys hanging around the coffin even more than she does Grave. Much like Snake and Crane Arts of Shaolin, as soon as the outside world figures out that the coffin is in Grave’s possession, everybody and their mother is ready to pick a fight with Grave for the coffin. That would include a twin-sister swordswomen team, a pair of ninja, some capoeira fighters, and even a pair of mutant martial artists who act like spiders. You can guess that there’s going to be a lot of fighting between Grave and these fellows.

More important among those after the coffin is the Monk (Takamasa Suga, Kamen Rider Ryuki). Monk, as you might imagine, hails from the East Temple, although he was away when Grave raided it. Monk will be the source of exposition throughout most of the movie, although you feel sorry for the poor bastard because everybody treats him like crap. He’s one of the few people who understand why the coffin is so dangerous, but everybody else is content to physically abuse him or go on about how weak he is. My favorite bit is where Grave punches him for talking too much while recounting the legend of the coffin.

Then there’s Sid (Kentaro Seagal, son of that great and legendary actor, Steven Seagal), another wandering samurai type who turns out to be as good a shot with a revolver (and a bazooka) as he is with the katana. Sid makes his appearance saving the Monk from a gang of forest-dwelling bandits, and makes it a point to steal the coffin whenever Grave isn’t looking. He’s also makes it a point to berate the Monk whenever possible and even praises Grave for stealing the coffin, because he apparently wanted nothing more than for the monks to be served a nice big slice of humble pie.

Finally there’s Yuri (Yuki Takeuchi, Hitch-Hike), a Goth swordswoman who apparently spawned by a Japanese woman who had an affair with The Flash, since she can move at super speeds. Unlike everybody else, Yuri is more or less on the Monk’s side, in that she has a inkling of an idea why walking around with the coffin might not be a good idea. However, instead of keeping it under lock and key, she has a better idea: If the coffin is a doomsday device, why doesn’t one just simply destroy it? As the characters’ paths cross, usually resulting in them beating each other up, we’ll start finding answers to questions like: What’s the deal with the coffin? Why is the girl following Grave around? Who’s the owner of the angelic hand (Yoko Fujita, Copy-Cat Killer) that caressed Grave’s face in a random scene early on in the film?

I think it says a lot about a movie’s entertainment value when it can present three of the hoariest clichés in the book and still come across as being fresh, especially when one of those clichés is one that I personally loath. The first one is the whole “Chosen One” idea that the movie dishes out early on, complete with a weapon only said Chosen One can effective wield. This is probably a continuation of the legacy of that darn King Arthur tale. Darn you, Arthur! Why did you have to draw the sword from the stone and set the stage for this trite plot device? It’s like The Mummy Returns, in which not only is Rachel Weisz not only turns out to be the reincarnated daughter of the Pharoah, but Brendan Fraser just happens  to be the only guy capable of using the weapon needed to kill the Scorpion King. What are the odds that those two would marry and become Egyptologists? As a movie-reviewing colleague once said, before long the chosen ones will outnumber us normal people. Thankfully, there’s a certain tongue-in-cheek approach to the whole plot device, including a dramatic attempt to use the Chosen Weapon that ends in failure. Also, I’m grateful that we don’t have to spend the movie waiting for the Chosen One resisting his destiny to kick a** (Witch from Nepal, I’m looking at you).

The next cliché the film trots out is the religious relic that doubles as a doomsday device. Beyond the usual questions of “Why would a religion (or a pantheon of gods) who generally create (or allow to be created) an object that could end everything, including their own existence,” the problem with this device is that the doomsday device almost never does anything in the actual story. It simply becomes a MacGuffin that spurs the actions of the characters and nothing more. Oh sure, in some movies, the device is activated, but it’s often deactivated before it can really do any damage, like the Sampo in Jade Warrior. This movie sets itself apart at least in that the device is both activated (so to speak) and presents grave consequences for everyone involved in the film by the end.

The cliché that I utterly detest is the one in which the child (or unborn baby) is an important instrument in the Battle between Good and Evil. I guess it’s a spoiler stating that said cliché shows up in this film, but the film gives a few obvious hints to it around the midway point. Like the Doomsday Device plot, this sort of plot is often guilty of making said child become nothing but a MacGuffin, like in Ultraviolet and that horrid Elektra film. Let’s not even talk about that Legion film, which supposes that God would need to send angels to kill a pregnant woman, when millennia before he was just as good at smiting people from Heaven whenever he needed to. Also, too many of these movies never explain HOW said kid will affect the balance for good or evil. Fortunately, Death Trance at least goes the full nine yards and shows us how the child figures into the Good/Evil equation and the results of it. Also, director Yuji Shimomura was smart enough to not have the little girl talk, making infinitely less irritating than the child in Six-String Samurai.

Speaking of which, Death Trance is that film’s successor in terms of its general setting, both in the film and where it was filmed. Six-String Samurai was set in an alternate-universe version of the United States following an obviously fictitious Russian invasion and subsequent nuclear holocaust. This film is also set in an alternate-universe version of Japan, also in the present/future (motorcyles, firearms, and rocket launchers are present), and is set at a time when it looks as if society had suffered some set of collapse. Death Trance is littered with characters who looked as if they has stepped off the set of a post-apocalyptic film, decked in racks and wearing lots of white makeup and black eyeliner. Both film center around the adventures of a samurai hero and his child companion, although the latter serve opposite purposes in their respective movies. Both movies were also filmed in the cheapest possible locations that a low-budget action film could be shot: for the American Six-String Samurai, it was in California’s Death Valley Desert. The Japanese equivalent of Death Valley (and Bronson Canyon) is the forest (I couldn’t tell you which one), which is the main location for this movie.

Much like its other spiritual predecessor, Versus, Death Trance is a pastiche of kung fu, chambara, and even bullet ballet sensibilities. Both films feature Tak Sakaguchi in the lead role as an utter bad-a** handing out six-packs of whoop and loaves of kung fu as he runs around a forest. Yuji Shimomura is once more behind the camera. Shimomura, however, has graduated from fight choreographer (trained by Donnie Yen) to director, leaving the action directing duties to Tak Sakaguchi and Go Ohara. Both films focus more on looking cool rather than looking plausible, especially in a big gun battle right before the climax. I should point out that Death Trance isn’t even a third as violent as Versus was, with most of the blood showing up during the final showdown. Both films have the same black sense of humor, although Shimomura rarely takes it to the darkly absurd extremes that Kitamura did in Versus.

Speaking of action, Tak Sakaguchi had grown a lot in the choreographer department between Godzilla: Final Wars and this film. Both him and Go Ohara (Onechambara: The Movie) keep the frequent action sequences varied, mixing kenjutsu, hand-to-hand combat, some basic wire-fu, and of course, wildly-exaggerated gunplay into each sequence. Heck, Tak and Go even go as far as to thrown in some capoeira-performing fighters, which imply that post-apocalyptic, neo-Feudal Japan still received its fair share of Brazilian immigrants.

The first big fight, a long fight between Grave and the locals, is arguably the best. Everybody gangs up on Grave: swordswomen, those aforementioned capoeira stylists, and a pair of ninja. The latter are especially fascinating, since they come at Grave armed with tonfa and katana. Suddenly, you see sparks erupting from the weapons and it becomes clear that their traditional weapons are doubling as firearms as well. Be on the lookout for scenes of Sakaguchi unleashing a barrage of punches on his opponents that suggest a predecessor to Yen’s later work in Ip Man. This shouldn’t be too surpising, as director Yuji Shimomura was a protégé of Donnie Yen himself.

There’s a sense of escalation to the action and Grave’s opponents grow harder and more dangerous with each showdown. He gets to learn from his mistakes, too. For example, one opponent proves to be far better with a sword than he is. So when they clash a second time, Grave neutralizes said opponent using jiu-jitsu and ground fighting techniques, which his sword-wielding adversary is totally unprepared to deal with. Shortly after that he has to face the spider ninjas, a fight involving wire-fu and rope webs that leaves everybody involved battered and bloody, including Grave himself.

The only false step in the action is the final duel, which is marred by an emphasis on too much CGI blood and not enough authentic swordplay. It sort of makes sense considering the nature of Grave’s final foe, but I wish it had been a nice fillet of maminha instead of the sound of said fillet being thrown on the grill. But still, since said fight precedes one of the most memorable final images I’ve seen in a film in a long time, I’m willing to be a bit more forgiving than I would’ve been otherwise.