Aragami (2003)

Too much of everything

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

I really liked the story in this movie, of mysterious beings that existed in the world and the night they spent before the showdown. However, it turned out to be just another action B-movie plagued by poor acting and story development.I should've known from the English opening credits that this movie would be a joke made for the foreign audience though. I can just see it now, these directors and producers discussing this film in a meeting. "Subtlety doesn't work for foreigners, let's have Oosawa Takao over-react to everything." "They like CG, let's add an unnecessary space scene to it." "They liked VERSUS, let's get Tak to appear in the end"...Katou Masaya's performance as Aragami was pretty impressive. He seemed to be really into the character and portrayed the mysterious character and its motive very well. Oosawa Takao though, I know is a much better actor from other films.This film's action wasn't bad, but nothing out of ordinary. It was clearly produced in a rush and little attention to details. The Aragami's speech, for example, ended sentences with "...Ja" in beginning of the movie, which is what barbaric men say in Japanese, but he practically stopped it altogether in the second half of the movie for no reason. Such abrupt change in speech pattern is a proof of poor production. A nice stab at the Dual Project Challenge, but ultimately a good script wasted.

Maybe I missed something. We have two men,one woman in one building. One man is a samurai and the other admits being a demon. First they eat and drink and talk. Nothing wrong with that. Until the samurai is asked by the demon,(war god) to kill him because he is tired. The samurai refuses since he doesn't believe him. After a short fight he finally believes him and accepts the demon's request. Now this promises a wonderful duel between the two. I must admit, I saw some good action. In my opinion it wasn't intense enough. When they fight,there are to many breaks in between that ruin the pace of the movie. And that is a bad thing because the pace is to slow from the start. There is nothing wrong with dialog. But for me this wasn't interesting enough. And I could forgive this if the action sequences would have been better,but that was not the case. Judging by the other reviews this movie is a masterpiece! I disagree. I just don't have the patience to watch a movie like this.

Aragami the demon god of battle, is one of the most awe inspiring samurai films ever created. Directed by Ryuhei Kitamura Aragami is an action packed adventure and will keep you on the edge of your seat the whole way through.During Japans medieval period many wars were waged many men died; however one samurai is about to engage in a duel that could be the end of his existence or the beginning of a new life. When two samurai seeking refuge from a great battle stumble upon an old temple they had no idea what they were getting themselves into, days later one of the Samurai (Takao Osawa) awakes to find that his friend has died and he learns a dark secret about his host the eccentric Miyamoto Musashi (Masaya Kato).The cinematography for Aragami is unlike anything I have ever seen, the combination of dark lighting and splashes of vibrant color make this film one of the most interesting samurai movies in existence.I enjoyed this film very much and would recommend it to anyone that enjoys samurai movies another fun fact about this film is that it was filmed in 7 days as part of a challenge to create a feature length film with 1 setting in 7 days called the Duel project.

This film was abysmal. It was so abysmal and such a waste of time that I at first decided not to waste even more time on writing a comment, but upon realising the lack of proper critique of this film, I decided to make possible future viewers a favour. This is not an action film, it is not an intelligent film. It would be unfair to say that it is somewhere in between; yes, it does fail to be any of the two, yet it also completely fails to be an interesting mix of the two. The result is truly bland. This seems to me a 15-year old's image of intellectualism and just general "coolness". If the director wanted this movie to be taken seriously, why is Aragami's hair dyed red? Just one of those stupid details which makes no sense, other than adding "coolness".No, I have nothing against action movies, nothing against intellectual movies, nothing against Japanese movies and I would say I usually do not have anything against samurai movies either. So... trust me. Just don't waste your time on this movie.