——Versus——

(A-)

Are you a fan of one or more of the following: samurai sword fighting, Hong Kong gunplay, Kung fu action, anime style film making, zombies and/or sweet stylish cinematography? Then you’ll love Versus. This is probably one of the coolest action movies I’ve ever seen, and that is still considering the fact that the screenplay is almost incomprehensible. The story consists of a inmate breaking out of prison only to be double crossed by the mob that is suppose to pick him up, so he escapes into the woods with a girl he doesn’t know only to find out that it is the Resurrection Forest, one of 666 portals to the Other Realm. Apparently the inmate has to fight another man in a battle that has been waged between good and evil for centuries only he can’t remember which side he is on, and the girl has something to do with opening the portal to the Other Realm. Besides that I really can’t tell you what the hell the movie is about because at times it seems like the characters don’t even remember what the movie is about. Everyone seems to have collective amnesia as to what their lives were like before the movie starts, and only remember key details when it is important to the story. But who cares about that? If you are watching this movie you’re not watching it for the story, you’re watching it for the action, which, frankly, kicks ass.

The director manages to film each fight (of which there are many; this movie is called Versus) with its own unique style so that the movie never becomes boring as we go into yet another fight sequence. The variety of weapons adds some extra flair to the action sequences too, since it seems more like you are watching five movies in one. The director is quite talented though, using moving cameras, odd angles and quick cutting to film some amazing fight sequences. He uses lots of gimmicks without ever making the film feel gimmicky or clichéd, making most of his shots more often than not jaw-droppingly cool.

The zombies aren’t really in much of the movie (only about 20 minutes is dedicated to the zombies we are all used to) but zombie-like people are all over the movie, since the main bad character decides to kill and then resurrect the gang to fight for him. The regular zombies are a lot like Romero zombies in that they are slow, lumbering and kind of stupid, but there is one main difference, which is that these zombies can use guns (although not very well because they are so slow. They mostly just shoot each other when someone living moves out of the way). Still, there is plenty of good gore scenes including not one, but TWO scenes where someone blows a giant hole in a zombie and the camera then zooms through the hole to show us how big it is.

The movie is a lot like Evil Dead combined with the Matrix, and when the movie isn’t trying to be serious it can be quite funny. There’s one sequence where this cop (who appears in the movie for no reason, but I won’t get into THAT) thinks that he is such a great fighter that he can dodge bullets because he is so fast. The main character shoots at him with this giant rifle (probably used to kill tanks or something like that) and the cop falls back like Neo dodging the bullets on the roof in the Matrix, only to at the last minute say “too slow” and blow up. That may not sound funny the way I described it, but it is hilarious in the film.

One thing that is bound to cause arguments between fans for years to come is the completely unnecessary and yet kind of interesting epilogue to the film. I myself am divided on whether or not I like it. On one hand the movie really doesn’t need it and could have ended just fine without the epilogue. Also the sets are pretty shitty, showing most obviously how low budget the movie really was. But then again the epilogue has a pretty cool idea in it (which I won’t ruin for you here) that actually makes the movie cooler. I don’t know, I’ll leave it to you to decide whether it belongs or not.

Anyway, even though this is a slightly flawed film I totally recommend you go out and rent the director’s cut of it right away. This movie is so damn cool. The final fight alone is worth the price of admission. I really want to see where this director goes from here. With a little more money and a better screenwriter he could go a long way. I really think this director is one to watch.