Customer Reviews

Crying Freeman - A Taste of Revenge (Vol 2)

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This is the LIVE ACTION VERSION of the Crying Freeman anime. This is a truly well done masterpeice of a film. Mark Dacasca's potrayed The Freeman perfectly. This by far one of the best if not the best live action adaption of an anime film. But seriously folks, No film is worth 99 dollars. I don't care if it is the film to end all films. They will sooner or later put this on DVD for 20 dollars.

CRYING FREEMAN: PORTRAIT OF A KILLER (1988) is the first of six Japanese anime volumes based on the manga (comic book) by Kazuo Koike and Ryoichi Ikegami about a handsome young sculptor who is forcibly recruited by the 108 Dragons, an ancient organization of Chinese assassins. We see him trained as an assassin and programmed to kill on their orders. His uncontrolled stream of tears after each killing and his yearning to be free give him the name, Crying Freeman.

Things get complicated when Freeman is forced to undertake the elimination of a witness to one of his killings. She is a beautiful, lonely, single Japanese woman and, like Freeman, an accomplished artist. They recognize each other as soul mates and he risks his lifeand hersto convince the organization of her value to him.

This 52-minute animated production is almost a perfect adaptation of the manga story and stands out as the best of the CRYING FREEMAN animated series. The dramatic mood and visual elegance of the black-and-white drawings are surprisingly well-captured by the anime, despite the bright colors and lighting. Daisuke Nishio, the anime director, knows how to pace a scene and establish the proper sense of time and place. It helps that Ikegamis drawings and his sense of cutting and composition are so astutely cinematic in the first place.

The Crying Freeman manga is notable for its high doses of nudity, near-pornographic sex and extremely bloody violence. The anime doesnt stint on these elements either, although it takes great pains to stay within R-rated limits. However, the sheer beauty of their presentation here may win over otherwise hesitant viewers, while fully satisfying the already jaded fans of more hard-edged anime.

The "Crying Freeman" manga has also been adapted, considerably less faithfully, into two live-action films, CRYING FREEMAN (France, 1995), directed by Christophe Gans (BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF) and starring Mark Dacascos, and KILLERS ROMANCE (Hong Kong, 1990), starring Simon Yam and Joey Wang.

Crying Freeman is a true work of art ahead of its time. Viewing this great anime is candy for the anime lover's eye. Kazuo Koike and Ryoichi Ikegami wrote the magna that turned into a smash hit. The plot is revolves around an assassin from the Chinese Mafia. Originally, an acclaimed pottery designer, Yoh Hinamura is drawn into a crime ring when he finds film that contains photographs of a murder. Brainwashed to be a killer he murders people and after every person, he kills, he weeps.

When a woman by the name of Emu Hino (age 29 and a virgin) witnesses a murder. They briefly and awkwardly talk for a moment before Yoh flees. Afterward she fears for her life.
When the Chinese Mafia, a drug and arms dealing business, expands into Japan police and a Japanese gang with a following of 26,000 members team up to stop the Mafia. In the first episode "Portrait of a Killer" Freeman, setting the plot into motion, assassinates the leader of the Japan gang. At that crime, by chance Freeman runs past Yoh. Their eyes never meet but she knows it was him.

When Freeman goes to assassinate Emu, she tells him that she knows she will be killed. Her final request is that she does not die a virgin. (Over protective late father kept her from experiencing love). She tells that she is a virgin to Yoh and he states that he is also a virgin. They have sex, revealing Yoh's intricate dragon tattoos. Both experiencing love for the first time, they start to car for each other and speeding up the process, she is shot in a scuffle immediately after they have sex. He rushes her to the hospital. Knowing that she will never be safe, he takes her in.

This anime is not for children or young teens for that matter. Crying Freeman has a mix of mild language with a large amount of upper nudity and several sexual orientations. All of this is heavily coated with pools of blood. This is a graphic anime but as stated earlier, this is geared toward a mature audience.

Recap: Beautiful anime that pushed the boundaries of acceptable anime when released in 1986. Till this day, Crying Freeman is still a crowd please. I loved it. If you are looking an anime with class but still contains a sexual and action packed adventure then you have found the right anime. Five Stars!

(About the DVD: this all-region release will play on North American DVD players, but with slightly reduced picture quality. There is only one audio track - English with bits of Japanese - but both Cantonese and (bad) English subtitles are included; the Japanese bits do not feature automatic subtitles, so these must be turned on manually. Despite being labeled "Special Widescreen Edition" on its cover, there are no special features included)

The story: when a lethal assassin known as the Freeman (Mark Dacascos, Brotherhood of the Wolf) is seen killing three members of the Yakuza by a beautiful artist named Emu (Julie Condra, Eerie, Indiana), her survival depends on their mutual affections for eachother amidst a Yakuza clan war instigated by a power-hungry rogue (Masaya Kato, Drive) looking to kill the Freeman.

Knowing the genre of "Crying Freeman" is a necessity before watching, lest you end up potentially disappointed. Basically, it's an action-drama with about three or four times more emphasis on drama than action. In the span of 102 minutes, there are only two shootouts and one martial arts/swordfight scene. There are a few assassination scenes placed throughout the rest of the movie, but these are generally quick and can't really count towards the overall action content. No matter how good the rest of the film may be, I personally was unable to get over how underutilized the talents of six-time martial arts champion Dacascos were: what's there is good, but if you're already familiar with the feats that he can pull off, I have no doubt that you'll share my sentiment.

Luckily, the rest of the movie is pretty good nevertheless, even though it struggles to find its pace. Director Christoph Gans may have coined a completely new genre in his melding of drama, action, crime-thriller, and arty elements; both he and cinematographer Thomas Burstyn (The 4400) deserve acclaim for how nice they made the movie to look at, with next to no aid from CGI (sans the cool opening titles). The dialogue gets a bit silly, though, although this may seem the case because I am unfamiliar with the original manga. The romance between Emu and Freeman is 100% forced and unaccounted for: audiences are expected to assume that love can blossom from seeing a complete stranger put bullets through the heads of three other strangers and that this turns into sex mere hours later. Yeah.

Dramatically, however, the film is in good hands: Dacascos fumbles a bit with his part, but he's successfully recued by Condra. Byron Mann (Street Fighter) co-stars as the Freeman's guide, and Rae Dawn Chong (Commando) and Tcheky Karyo (Kiss of the Dragon) do well as police detectives of the opposite sides of the coin. Though a bit boring, Masaya Kato is effectively cold-blooded, and Yoko Shimada (James Clavell's Shogun) makes an eventual strong showing as his ambitious wife. The amazing Mako (Conan the Barbarian) has a small but important role, and performs as strongly as always even though he's a bit out of his element.

Despite having developed into a small-time cult favorite, I found next to nothing besides the film's art direction particularly remarkable; even the absurd amount of slow motion is no longer the movie's own. I suppose I set my standards too high and expected more of an action movie along the lines of Dacascos' other movies, but it simply doesn't hold up too impressively as anything other than a comic adaptation. If you're after the definitive Dacascos action package, check out "Drive" instead.

I preffer this version than the short anime serie because I saw the animated serie and it wasn't THAT good. :(
The animation was so-so, the graphics were not so inspiring, some of the characters looked stupid, the action was NOTHING great and the storyline was a little slow.

NOW THIS ONE! is the "worth buying it". There is SLOW-MO ACTION like in the John Woo films, FAST gun-fights, BIG explotions, good acting, GREAT martial arts movements and COOL one man army swordman scene!!! ;D
If you think that the story is more important then I recomend the anime version, but if you are looking for COOL FAST action then I recomend this one.

This movie have basically the same story as the animated serie but a little summarized.

About the dvd: The picture quality is very good but when the camera goes to "close-up" there are some brieff purple lights in the picture but is not THAT annoying, besides, it's only at the begining of the movie, the last best action scenes doesn't have that. The sound hears good but is low volume, so you have to turn up your tv volume to hear the sound much clearer.

Adios.

I enjoyed the 5 graphic novels of Crying Freeman by Dark Horse. The animated movies were good but not as good as the graphic novels. This movie compared to the animated version and graphic novels is a disappointment. It is disjointed and the actors left much to be desired. This movie is in English with Chinese subtitles. But there are portions of the movie were Chinese (Cantonese dialect) or Japanese is spoken only that was not background chatter, but dialogue that I think was important to the storyline and flow of the movie. These conversations leaves the movie viewer clueless unless he/she can understand or read Chinese or Japanese. The important scene where Freeman falls in love with Emu is weak and not convincing. The dialogue strayed from the graphic novel at that scene and it was disappointing because the script replacing it was poor. The acting in that scene was also disappointing. As a stand alone movie, I rate this movie no more than three stars. As the first Crying Freeman movie, it is a disappointment.

I have the 5 video series of Crying freeman and have been waiting a long time for the series to make its way to DVD. I must say I am a bit dissappointed that they did not release the series on fewer dvds but it is about money. As for the person who commented on the animation on this dvd. It looks like it does on vhs which is what most fans that are buying the series expect. There is a change in the animation style but things do return to the original style. I mean considering when this series was created it is very good but it's no Ninja Scroll or Cowboy Bebop.

I have all the volumes and love each one although the last two aren't as good as the first. The episodes start repeating themselves after a while. In the first, Freeman's origin of how he is turned into an assassin against his will is revealed and he cries each time he kills somebody as a release to his true self. He is sent to kill a woman but she doesn't want to die a virgin so she asks that he have sex with her before he kills her. Being the nice guy that he is, he agrees. He says he's also a virgin. I think he was lying. This guy has sex with pretty much every woman he meets in this series. He didn't start having sex until he met this woman in the first episode? I don't believe it. Anyway, he falls in love with her and marries her. The rest of the episodes go something like this: somebody or some group wants to kill Freeman and take over the 108 Dragons and Freeman stops them. That's pretty much it. Oh yea, plenty of killing, nudity and sex is thrown in. Some lovable characters are thrown in and some die sadly but it's all good. For me, the only let down is Freeman never becomes free. At the end of the series he is still a killer. I was expecting a breakthrough. His soul is obviously being tortured since he cries after he kills. I would have liked to see him break away from that life. But oh well. I still love it. It's a classic

When will you have more copies Amazon? The other ones will not play in my DVD player. I hope you have more soon. I enjoyed this movie very much. Anime fans will love it. Hurry up Amazon and get some more quick!

I am a fan of the jap-animation of crying freeman and I have to say that the live action film did not disappoint me. the martial arts and gun fighting was awesome. It followed the animation and i thought the people playing the characters did a very good job - - especially Mark Dacascos who protrayed Yoh/Freeman. In case your wondering he played the bad guy in Cradle 2 the Grave with Jet Li - - and they have a really cool face off at the end of the movie.

I recommend Crying Freeman to people who are hardcore fans of the series. If you're just looking to see some kung fu - - and you will see it in this movie, but then you'd have to put up with the few in between slow parts as well - - for example, when Yoh does a flashback to explain how he became Crying Freeman.

I know that this film is not availbe in the U.S. but i think it's worth looking for. I tried to find it in video stores but couldn't. Therefore i turned to ebay to buy a copy. You can get a copy relatively cheap - - but make sure that it's in english audio and/or have english subtitles.

I hope this review was helpful and enjoy the movie!!