Azumi tells the story of an old soldier's quest to end all war in ancient feudal Japan. The movie begins (in part) by presenting a flashback scene of the aging warrior during a younger time, where he and a priest stand at the end of a great battle surveying the massive carnage that was its toll. Stricken and appalled by the devastation that surrounds them, the soldier makes an oath to the priest to dedicate his life to ending all war in Japan by assassinating those who would make it.

Zip forward to the present. Over the course of several years, the soldier has adopted ten small children and raised and trained them under his careful eye. All ten are heavily trained and masters of combat. The movie proceeds to tell of this team's efforts to assassinate the three great warlords in Japan and thus (ideally) end war in the country. Azumi, the only female in the group of highly trained assassins, is the most adept of the troop by raw speed alone.

Arterial spray: it's good for the pores.

This is a damned fun movie, full of massive fight scenes with barrels of arterial spray. The fights are often huge and involve great crowds, larger even than the infamous Crazy 88 scene of Kill Bill. As with Versus, another excellent movie by director Ryuhei Kitamura, the movie mixes action and humor to create a blend that's a joy. Azumi has a rather anime feel to it (it's based on a manga), especially in the personalities and styles of some of the antagonizers. We've a monkey-dog warrior who makes odd dog-like whining sounds in combat. Then there's the incredibly vain, rather effeminate master swordsman who wears flowing white robes and is constantly sniffing at a bright red rose when he's not torturing small animals. Overall, the characterizations give a great 'comic book' feel to the movie that's just a damned good time.

There are multiple overseas releases of this film, and the only current region 3 (playable in USA DVD players) is a Korean release. The DVD comes with a bit of extras, including a trailer, a TV-spot, a featurette, as well as information on the cast and crew. Unfortunately, most (if not all) of the extras do not contain a speck of English. This is fairly typical and is a good rule of thumb when buying a foreign release of a movie; while the feature film may have English subtitles, the extras almost always do not.

TRISTAN SINNS