Sky High (2002)

Sky High (2002)
Japanese Title: スカイハイ 劇場版
Translation: Sky High the Movie

 

Starring: Yumiko Shaku, Takao Osawa, Shosuke Tanehara, Yumi Kikuchi, Aya Okamoto
Director: Ryuhei Kitamura
Action Director:  ???

 

Back in the first half of the last decade, if you asked who the up-and-coming Japanese director was, a number of people would’ve responded Ryuhei Kitamura. The man achieved a great deal of fame among cult movie fans with his film Versus. Versus was very much a Japanese approximation of a Tarantino film in that it took the director’s favorite genres (in this case, samurai films, zombie films, HK action films, Yakuza films, etc.) and put them into a blender and hit “Purée”. I’ve yet to find a person who didn’t like that film and it firmly established Mr. Kitamura’s cult status.

Afterward, he did some other films, including the big-budget samurai film Azumi, the chamber piece Aragami, and the futuristic prison film Alive. By 2004, his reputation had grown so much among cult circles that Toho decided that he would be the best choice for the last Godzilla film, which they were hoping would get widespread international release. It didn’t quite work out that way, however. The film was a flop domestically and only got a straight-to-DVD release in the States. After that, Kitamura tried his hand at pure horror with the Clive Barker adaptation The Midnight Meat Train. That film received mix reviews, but only got a limited theatrical showing.

So Kitamura is a strange filmmaker. His style can be defined by the following characteristics: films that are never shorter than two hours, lots of characters wearing black leather, people fighting with swords (often for no reason), Matrix-riffs, and swirling photography. In the context of some of his films, like Versus and Alive, that’s not a problem. A number of people criticized its inclusion in a Godzilla film, but that’s okay. It was probably more out of place than anything in Midnight Meat Train, which I haven’t seen yet.

Speaking of not having seen, until recently, I had only watched one Kitamura film and that was Godzilla Final Wars. While on a break from Chinese films, I decided to watch another Kitamura film and try to close that gap in my watching. So, for reasons I myself can’t understand, I decided that I’d go with this film, instead of his more popular Versus and Azumi. Whatever. Here we are. Let’s take a look:

The film begins with the discovery of the body of a young woman strung up with chains inside a warehouse. Her heart has been ripped out, which is apparently the signature of a serial killer who has been targeting young women recently. The detective on the case is Kanzaki, who’s marriage to Mina (Yumiko Shaku, Godzilla x Mechagodzilla and Princess Blade) is the next day. He’s a bit obsessed with the case, but does make it to his wedding…almost a bit late though. However, his world is turned upside-down when the serial killer chooses Mina as his/her next victim. It’s a memorable scene to see Mina walk into the chapel with her heart ripped out and walk up to the altar before actually dying. It also doesn’t make a lot of sense at first, although the film does go back and explain how she made it that far later on.

Mina’s soul travels to a sort of Limbo known as the Gate of Rage. The guardian of the gate is a female swordswoman, who informs Mina that she has three choices: She can haunt the world forever as a ghost, she can be reborn and start life anew, or she can seek revenge and risk going to Hell for taking another life. She is given a few days to decide, in which the film kind of goes into Ghost mode. Mina’s main concern is Kanzaki, who’s upset enough that he’ll probably do something rash, like kill the person responsible or himself, putting himself in danger of Hell. She does try to investigate her death a little.

The person responsible turns out to be Kudo, a billionaire geneticist. Why’s he doing this? Well, his wife got sick with a disease the doctor’s couldn’t heal and so, in order to save her, he’s been doing some Lovecraftian research (the movie implies he’s been studying the Necronomicon ) and has discovered that if he kills certain specific women and removes their hearts, he can have power over Hell and rescue his wife or something. However, the murders themselves are not performed by him, lest he go to Hell for them, but by his pretty secretary, who’s an awesome swordswoman, too. Not only that, both Kudo and the secretary can see ghosts and her sword is enchanted in such a way that it can kill the dead as well as it can kill the living.

The main problem of this film is that with several different plot threads fighting for dominance, the most important plot, Mina’s decision about what she should do, ends up getting the least attention. She spends the first half of the film following her fiancé around a lá Ghost, and then, in a turn of events that robs her story of any suspense the film might have had (I’m told this is typical of Kitamura), the ”death” of the gate guardian and her subsequent call to fill in the guardian’s shoes basically makes her decision for her. The idea of a ghost having to decide between revenge, rebirth, and aimless wandering is interesting, but it doesn’t get a lot of attention here. The script finds the other two plot threads, Kudo’s search for more victims and Mina’s fiancé’s search for revenge, more interesting.

That said, there are some things to recommend the film. The action sequences in the second half are pretty good. There’s some good swordplay from the female characters. Yumiko Shaku is no stranger to the katana, she starred in Princess Blade two years before and fought notably under Donnie Yen’s direction. There’s a nice scene where Kudo’s female assassin friend cuts a swath through a bunch of samurai-types guarding Shuho (Yumi Kikuchi, who did voicework in the Metal Gear: Solid games), a medium and Kudo’s last target. Shuho and the assassin than have a prolonged swordfight ending with the assassin’s demise. The film climaxes with a sword duel between Mina and Kudo.

The movie also looks really good and the photography is pretty strong. There’s a really cool scene where Mina’s fiancé goes to the church and plays the events that led up her death in reverse. It’s filmed really neatly and I have to say I like it. The production values are solid and the acting is pretty good, too.

There are some places where the film stumbles. I mentioned the lack of focus on Mina’s character. There’s a bizarre scene in the movie where Mina’s fiancé goes into a place run by some drug dealer and beats some information out of him. What’s strange is that before the cop enters, the guy is watching a scene from the movie itself on television. To be specific, the guy is watching the scene of Mina talking to the guardian of the Gate of Rage. The fiancé sees this, but thinks nothing of it. Strange. There are also a few characters too many, including the Whoopi Goldberg photographer and the female policewoman who tries to help Mina’s fiancé after the fact. Also, a good portion of the film is spent on a reporter who turns out to be Kudo’s intended victim. When said reporter does die and go to the Gate of Rage, she immediately chooses rebirth and disappears from the film completely.

Being a Ryuhei Kitamura film, we do get the prerequisite people in black leather, characters brandishing swords, and two-hour running time. I’ve read reviews that accused this movie of being Ghost by way of The Matrix, but, other than the black leather and one bullet-time shot at the end, I didn’t really see it. However, if you thought that the problem with Ghost was that there weren’t enough cute Japanese girls brandishing katana blades and that Patrick Swayze didn’t carry an enchanted revolver with him into the afterlife, than this is the film for you.