Japan, 2005Cast: Aya Ueto, Yuma Ishigaki, Chiaki Kuriyama
Director: Shusuke Kaneko
My Rating: *1/2 / ****
Unintended success achieved by certain movie, almost usually led to a sequel. Why, of course, why bother to waste time and effort to think of a fresh idea, while we could expand the idea from before, with certain reasonable logic to expect that at least the fan of the preivous idea would return to see a sequel, no matter how crappy it does in the end.
Azumi, though i dont know wether the success it achieved was unintended or the actual idea of a sequel has been established prior to the release, was one of those movie with shallow-sequel - well, most of the sequels nowadays are usually shallow - that follows.
Taking the spot where the original movie ended, Azumi, a female - of course, she had to be a cute one, or nobody would waste the time to see it - assassin, with the only companions alive that she had, continued her mission to assassinate certain lord in order to brought an overlong civil-war to an end.
Now, i could summed up the movie with a simple analogy that watching this movie feels like playing an adventure slasher-action video-game but without a joystick. Hence, the unlimited control to the player movement and the outcome would be reduced to zero. On the first Azumi, we were given a joyous adventures of Azumi and - if i remember correctly - her four companions throughout the feudal Japanese era which suffered because of a civil war. However, in Azumi: Death or Love, the spotlight was ever set on Azumi herself and no others. So throughout the movie, there were too many shots of Azumi - too many that it goes ever downward to BOW-RING -, while the story progresses as those of video-games previously mentioned. Azumi made her journey, from stage to stage, to fight a silly enemies whose ever goes stronger - or dumber, i dont know which - as the plot very-very-linearly advances, and ultimatelty, in the end, our heroine fought with the big boss himself. Well, actually the plot was very similar to many other actions involving samurai swords. Even Kill Bill which your reviewer here love the most, had the same plot. Put a heroine on a mission, put a vicious villain on her path, before finally she clashes with the big boss. So, what's wrong with Azumi: Death or Love?
Everything in Azumi: Death or Love was wrong to my eyes. The scenes were alternating between actions and crappy soap-opera dramas. So, after a not-too-shabby-but-far-away-from-good sword-clinging actions, the movie dragging itself to a lowly conversations between the casts which usually talked about nothing of importance but takes more time than to prepared a boiled noodle. Then, there were not enough reason to do this or to believe that on this movie, which in turns, also contributed very well to dragginess of the movie. For example, when the only Azumi's companion left from the first sequel told her to go and abandon the mission, with speech about how he didn't gave a damn on the mission they supposed to be done, bla, bla, bla. If i was in Azumi's position, knowing my companion by heart - as suggested on the movie, both of them -, i would believe that he would had the determination which impossible to deny. Not after what he's been through. But yet, Azumi believed him just like that. That was plain stupidity of her. And yet, in the end, she doesn't want to be blamed for the aftermath of it. A selfish heroine in a supposedly light-weight action movie? that won't do. But otherwise, hadn't it runs too long, the movie was enjoyable. If only they cut at least thirty-minutes of it. One hour and fifty-one minutes for such a simple movie was much-much too long. And quoting Ebert, "No good movie is too short nor too long".
In the end, i think, Azumi: Death or Love would only be satisfiable to those who had a passion to Aya Ueto, the actress who played Azumi. Also appears on this movie was Chiaki Kuriyama who were, unfortunately, far less formidable than her previous role of Go-Go Yubari on Kill Bill: Volume I.