PeteThePrimate
One of the worst films I've ever seen. The acting was hammy and stilted, the plot and action scenes were amateurish and unbelievable. The cinematography tried to be arty farty and failed miserably. Avoid.
BA_Harrison
Yo Hinomura (Mark Dacascos) is Freeman, an assassin for the Chinese order The Sons of the Dragons, sent to Canada to deal with the Yakuza who are causing trouble in their homeland. When beautiful artist Emu (Julie Condra) witnesses Yo at work, she becomes his next target, but when the killer comes a-calling, intending to bump off his witness, he winds up falling in love with her instead.There's more than a little of the John Woo about Christophe Gans' live-action manga Crying Freeman: assassins and gangsters with a code of honour, an innocent woman caught in the middle of a bitter feud, lots of juicy bullet squibs, and more ballistic action and swordplay than you can shake a katana at. Of course, that in itself doesn't guarantee a good film, and Crying Freeman does suffer a little from an overly-ponderous tone, not helped by an excess of slow motion (another Woo trademark). There's also a disappointing lack of martial arts from its talented star Mark Dacascos.The good news is, however, that the positives outweighs the negatives: Dacascos puts in a fine central performance as the regretful killer who sheds a tear with every mission, the cinematography is great, the violence is satisfyingly brutal (and suitably balletic), and Gans balances the action and the romance confidently. The result is a stylish film that, while no classic, should still be well worth the time for most action fans.6.5 out of 10, rounded up to 7 for IMDb.
craig-884
I keep seeing this movie compared to anime or martial arts movies, and while I can see its roots in both genres, Crying Freeman is not really either. It might be a genre to itself.Years ago I read a book named "The Painted Bird" that I thought deserved to be taught as a classic because its clean, spare style deserved study. But what really set it apart for me was that it was permeated with violence - it was about WWII and life under the brutal rule of Nazi invaders - but its treatment was so spare and clean it somehow rose above its subject matter into the mythic and poetic.That's how this movie struck me. It is violent without being blood-soaked, has some highly charged eroticism without sinking into porn, and says more with the star's silence than could ever be told with dialog. The filming style is as spare and beautiful as I remember the text in "The Painted Bird" and can't be separated from the overall mythic impact of the movie.I'm not saying this is a world-changing movie. It didn't give me some sort of epiphany, and at my age I'm no big fan of martial arts movies or anime cartoons. I'm just saying there is something quite beautiful about the way this movie fits together that elevates it above a subject matter that could have been cheapened into a spatter flick or bloated into a pure CG actioner. It's worth watching if only to sink your mind into the elusive, mythic quality that sets this movie apart.
geckokid-1
This movie started out quite nicely, until the Chinese started speaking. It couldn't stop me laughing since then. The realisticity was completely broken when what the Chinese Mafia/secret society speak is Cantonese, which only people in Guangdong, Macau and Hong Kong speaks. But none of those places were featured in the movie. Additionally the Cantonese dialogues are really cheesy, and the stereotype of Asians being chain-smokers just annoys me. The same language problem happened to the Flight of the Phoenix where the locals were speaking Cantonese. There are way too many explosions, especially considering what caused them. The set where the main character was taken was poorly made too. I wouldn't recommend this movie if you can understand Mandarin or Cantonese, as it would be a laughing joke for you, like it did for me.
AD
