Umizaru

"Death seems to follow you." This is certainly a highly above-average example of a particularly peculiar genre of “hard in training, even harder on the battlefield". I repeat, for this genre. Although it contains perhaps all possible clichés from similar pictures, they are worked in with sensitivity and don’t get on your nerves like in some other cases. The filmmakers scored a point by not hanging around much and plunging you straight into the whirlwind of training. Perhaps that is the influence of the story it’s based on. Originally it was a series of comic books about the divers of Japan’s Coast Guard. No grueling introductions of merely outlined characters. Not that we don’t get some of this, but you are introduced to them one by one. And still you get to know them best in the action. Movies of this genre most often fail due to a long-winded and boring training part and also due to enamored “hanky-panky". The creators avoided the first problem with flying colors. But they had a head-on collision with the second pitfall. Firstly this storyline flows along an unbearably comic vein, which is really out of place in the movie overall. It gets gradually better, but the initial getting to know you moments are awful. The second half of the movie is then a prime example of the genre. Packed with adrenalin, emotional tension and suspense. Even when you know how it all ends and when that is going to happen. And it has splendid background music. And I don’t mean the theme that was playing when Easy Company was liberating Europe. I’m interested when at last somebody will ignore the over-played template for training movies and go their own way. And I would have expected that to come from Asia. But Umizaru isn’t that kind of movie. Maybe next time... (26.01.2008)