Year: 2002
Director: Ryuhei Kitamura
Written by: Isao Kiriyama, Ryuhei Kitamura, Tsutomu Takahashi, Yudai Yamaguchi
Main cast: Hideo Sakaki, Ryō, Tetta Sugimoto, Koyuki, Shun Sugata, Erika Oda, Tak Sakaguchi, Jun Kunimura
Genre: Action, Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller, Fantasy
Runtime: 109 min.
Country: Japan
Language: Japanese
Subtitles: Japanese, english
Buy DVD: CDJapan.com
Based on the manga book by Tsutomu Takahashi. Tenshu is imprisoned and sentenced to death for murdering the men who raped his girlfriend. However, he manages to survive his execution and is presented with an option: face another execution attempt or subject himself to their bizarre and dangerous experiments. He choses the latter and is put in a cell with a rapist and a woman who's infected with a taint that transports from person to person during extreme anger. The taint is transferred to Tenshu and he must now deal with the military who has interrupted the experiment to obtain it.
Alive isn't a very good movie, and I didn't like it much. It's full with potentiality, but something simply doesn't work well. The problem is that some scenes are really too slow and boring. Nothing to compare with the dark, wonderful manga by Tsutomu Takahashi, on which the film is based. Alive movie is a waste of time, and that's a real pity! However some action and fighting scenes are beautiful, special effects are good, sci-fi atmospheres are well done and Hideo Sakaki is a perfect main character, cool as we've never seen him before. Tetta Sugimoto (also seen in The Last Samurai) and Ryō are beautiful, and play two nice characters. Anyway, my advice is to avoid this movie. It's not really ugly, but is nothing special. Tak's fan should avoid Alive as well, because he appears only for a short time in the end of the movie but he's barely recognizable. He seems more like a lizard-man than a human being.
Rating: 5/10