Goemon

Not too long ago, I was looking for my first batch of blu ray's to purchase on Amazon. Some of my searches included films like Mongol and Red Cliff, both of which I ended up purchasing. But Amazon being the magical site it is, managed to catch my eye with some suggested products. The suggestions included two films: Goemon and Casshern. Both films are directed by Kazuaki Kiriya. Goemon is the more recent of the two films, so I decided to check it out.

Watching the trailers of both of these films, it is small wonder they are directed by the same person. Kiriya certainly loves his digital environments and actors. Goemon seems evokes the style of the airbrushed and too-pristine-to-be-real 300 look convolved with the absolute insanity of a next generation video game  cut scene. I would go as far as to say that this is an animated film with real actors in it.

I was not sure whether this was a good or a bad thing at first. I liked Frank Miller's 300 graphic novel, but the movie left me cold with its synthetic environments and hyper-stylized, slow-motion fetish (here's hoping Zack Snyder doesn't pollute Superman with the same level of gimmickry).

"This. Is. Slloooowwwww moootttiiioooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn"

After Goemon's boisterous first scene, it was clear that this film was not trying to bamboozle the audience into thinking this was real. Kiriya not only embraces the insanity of the cartoonish delivery, he revels in it. Make no mistake: this film loves being bat-shit crazy. Goemon manages to use the same tools as 300, while being its exact opposite. Kiriya uses his CG wonders not as a painful exercise in over exposed slow-motion film making; he uses it to speed things the fuck up. His action is breathlessly paced. People are running, jumping, vaulting, chopping and flying through the air with such speed as to leave the audience running to catch up. Goemon himself is a shinobi who can seem to leap hundreds of feet in the air and ride a horse down the side of a mountain that any normal person would call a sheer cliff without pausing for a breathe.

While none of this looks particularly realistic, I personally found this literal change of pace to be the most attractive part of the film. No more over-use of glorifying slow motion. This film has CG environments and actors that keep the action moving exceptionally fast, and can be quite breathtaking at times.

That is, if you can get over the fact that the abilities of the characters in the film seem to be chaotic at best. You would think Goemon himself is a god considering the maneuvers he pulls. There does not seem to be any over-arching explanation as to what these shinobi can do, and when they can do it. That type of logical gap tends to get under my skin. Essentially, it seems to be a film without any rules. When you have a film that doesn't establish any rules, all of the action scenes lose their potency because there is no real element of danger.

The plot of the film is fairly forgettable. It seemed like quite a long film, and I felt it did not have the right to be so. There was at least one action set piece I thought was to be the final scene, but was proven wrong when another scene, the scope of which was even larger, played out extending the run time of the film.

The characters suffer from some of the same issues in 13 Assassins. The chief offender being the one-dimensional antagonist.

Our second one-dimensional Japanese antagonist. Sadly, no nickname was given...

His one-dimensional offense? He throws a baby in a vat of boiling oil.

...

Yeah. What a douche-bag. 

One thing about the action that I cannot go without mentioning are some of the up close, torso-up running shots. There are scenes with Goemon racing through the rain and facing the camera that are shot almost portrait style, while the background zooms by behind him. These scenes induced what I hope to be unintentional laughter from me, due to the fact that it is painfully obvious that the actor is on a green screen set, running on the spot, and probably having water thrown onto his face.

That's right. Running on the spot. It seems to be so obvious that it's kind of hysterical. All of the effects wizardry to create feats bedazzling to behold, and the production had to rely on an actor running on the spot to film these intense sequences? Did they not have a treadmill they could use? Maybe a steady-cam they could have attached to the actors waist and have him actually run to help represent the physical action? 

I appreciate Goemon for what it is: An exercise in style which attempts to separate itself from other efforts by building energy in its action scenes using speed. The plot is forgettable (except for that baby scene, which was ridiculously memorable), and the drama overwrought. Goemon is strictly a visceral experience which is not ashamed of its heavy reliance on its digitally rendered universe. I applaud Kiriya for attempting to do something different with a set of tools that have been abused in the past.