Versus

Whoo mamma...what have we got here? Shoot-outs, kung fu, zombies and loads of bloody action eastern style! It must be yet another kick in the teeth to the western genre scene? Yup, it's Ryuhei Kitamura's wild and fun 'Versus'!

'Versus' opens like a hundred 70's shogun movies that fans of the genre will have seen before, tough as hell samurai chaps are doing the business with their 'big' swords, here it's the multiple body slicing of some undead samurai attackers! The scene then cuts to nowadays, where we meet two escaped convicts who have just hooked up with their jail-breaking gang colleagues. Each one of them straight from the set of countless old John Woo gang flicks and all bravados their machismo to the next. Their plans to make escape are flawed and things very soon become tense and inevitably tempers and violence explodes, but what these guys don't realise is that the forest their hiding out in must have been the same one that Bruce Campbell encountered in the 'Evil Dead' as when one of their entourage is blasted dead by gunfire he quickly rises again as one of the undead! And so the fun begins...

Kitamura's 'Versus' is an entertaining hybrid of most fan's genre favourites, covering everything from Fulci's zombie extravagances (with some similarly great gory action), the aforementioned Shogun swordplay frenzies of yesteryear, John Woo gun battle gang flicks with just a touch of Sam Raimi and kung fu chucked in for good measure! There's not a lot of plot to be going on with here, but there is indeed one evident (the bulk of which takes place in the opening and final section of the movie), whilst the mainstay of the films surprisingly lengthy running time (well considering it's about two hours long) is nothing but fighting, killing and fighting some more!! Kitamura's fast paced stylish direction and keen eye for editing skills holds your attention nicely and fans of the aforementioned genre movie styles shouldn't be disappointed at all...well, that is apart from the disc itself of course...

The film is presented in widescreen ratio with clear legible (unremovable) English subtitles throughout. But it is the image (and to a point sound) quality that really does let things down considerably. The picture is decent enough but screams 'bootleg' at you constantly, and not even a great one at that. The fact that the film has no menu or chapter options I can happily live with, but I at least want the picture to be solid and clear throughout the films running time but this really does look like a second generation VHS dupe that's been transferred on DVD, with most annoyingly unstable colour regularly showing on the lead characters faces (which at times are a shimmering orange!!) it doesn't ruin your viewing pleasure but you'll wonder if you wouldn't have been better off watching a VHS version instead.

That said though, word is that it could be some time before the film gets an official DVD release on the Asian market (can you wait?) and seemingly it's going to be (ahem) re-edited for the US market also (why oh why??) - the film is bloody great fun and the disc is a bit of a let down but still very watchable. The choice is yours?

Review by Alan Simpson