The VIIth installment of the Final Fantasy series of RPGs was released in Japan sometime in January 1997. It went on to become a huge hit both at home and internationally. Final Fantasy VII set new standards in RPG gameplay and story-telling and it raised the bar so high that the other RPGs that followed later would only pale in comparison. It was the best of the whole Final Fantasy series and is now widely regarded by many gamers as "The best RPG ever made". Some even go as far as to say it is "the best game ever made", but that claim surely has many other worthy contenders like Half-Life, Quake 3 etc.
Now, after eight long and agonising years, Square Enix has come out with a sequel to this path breaking game. Only this time, you don't get to play as Cloud Strife, Tifa Lockheart or Vincent Valentine, but you get to watch them kick ass! The sequel to FF VII is not a game but a full feature length 3D CG animated movie.
FF VII : Advent Children released theatrically in Japan and is also being released on DVDs and UMDs (Universal Media Disc) for the Sony PSP.


Review

FF VII. The story so far...
Cloud Strife is a mercenary, formerly working as a SOLDIER member for the Shinra Corporation. Like most big corporations, Shinra Corp does more evil than good by harvesting the planet's lifestream to create energy. This affects the planets ecosystem and in a very Gaia thoery-esque way the planet retaliates to protect itself. Cloud leaves Shinra to join a band of mercernaries who fight against the evil and finally save the world from Sephiroth.

Final Fantasy : Advent Children begins with a couple of sentences in Japanese which translate in English as:

"To those who loved this world once before
and spent time with its friends,
Gather again and devote your time..."

Reading that assures you that Square Enix has made this movie for all the people who loved the world of FF. Contended, you settle down and make yourself comfortable, absolutely unprepared for one helluva ride.


Animation

From the opening shot showing Red XIII (Nanaki) bounding down a valley followed by some of his mates, you realise that the animation in this feature is going to be of the highest pedigree. And the credits sequence which follows soon thereafter will give you only a small taste of the hyper kinetic action-animation that will follow later in the film.
Due to the lack of adequate adjectives required, I will not attempt to describe the animation. Words like "Awesome", "God-Like", "Incredible" etc. will not do justice to the animation. Instead I will note that SquareSoft has certainly learnt a lot from it's last FF movie, Spirits Within. They do not try to create ultra human-like characters in this movie. Don't get me wrong. They are very life-like but they don't serve as replacements for human actors like Spirits Within. Instead, the characters in Advent Children are more elfin than human. Both the men and women are incredibly beautiful and this makes you think that you are watching a fantasy with beautifully animated characters instead of some almost-human looking characters (in Spirits Within) that emote like wooden dolls. I give a lot of points to the animation of hair, clothes etc. The attention to detail is unbelievable.
The only flaws that I noticed were some fast cuts and editing in the fight scenes. Since this flaw should count in the Action section and affects the animation only a bit, I will remove 0.3 points to give the animation a score of 9.7/10.
Animation - 9.7/10


Action
A couple of my favorite animated movies have scenes of ultra-fast bike racing. The first is "Akira" with it's depiction of the underground Bike racing in Neo-Tokyo. After that, "Wonderful Days" also has a lot of chase scenes in futuristic bikes. So, when Advent Children starts off with a credits sequence featuring Cloud Strife zooming away in his bike, the Fenrir, chased by a couple of baddies on their own bikes racing at unbeleivable speeds, it only takes a few seconds for this sequence to make you forget about Akira and Wonderful Days.
The actions slows down a bit for the first half hour to build the story. That does not mean there is no action during that time! Tifa Lockheart introduces herself in style, Cloud battles against Kadaj and his cronies where Vincent Valentine makes his appearance.
After the first half hour, it is one hour full of incredible action. From the word go, as Kadaj summons the Bahamut, and Cloud and his team members make thier stylish appearances, it is a rollercoaster ride of hyperkinetic action including but not limited to gunfights and swordfights on the ground, then the same while airborne and then more supersonic bike chase scenes (woot!) and some good ol' martial arts too.
The fast cut editing flaw pops up here too. I realise that this is a fantasy action movie with superhuman abilities and stunts but IMO some action scenes were made with too many fast cuts and constant changes in camera angles which might be disoreinting to some. So, I rate the action at 9.5/10.
Action - 9.5/10


Sound
The sound matches the quality of the animation. The background track is very good, changing according to the story and when the action appears on screen, the accompanying tracks are just perfect keeping up with the tempo of the kinetic action. I particularly liked the "Sephiroth" song that plays during the climax.
The voice acting turns out well. All the voices suit their respective characters.
The sound gets rated at 9.2/10.
Sound - 9.2/10

Story
The story takes off two years after the world changing events in the climax of the FF VII game. Strife and Tifa live together in a bar called the Seventh Heaven, taking care of orphans affected by a strange disease Geostigma.
A man named Kadaj, along with his brothers are on a hunt for their "mother".
What will happen when Kadaj finds his "mother"?
Watching FF VII Advent Children without playing the game might leave you clueless in some parts of the movie, but it was not as bad as I thought it would be. Adequate references are given to past events. However, since the mode of story-telling is different from Hollywood, it took me a second viewing to understand the plotline. I suggest two or more viewings to understand the story as the action will distract you during the first viewing.
I would rate the story temporarily at 8.5/10. After playing FF VII completely, the score will definitely increase. (I'm still struggling with FF VI).
Story - 8.5/10


Characters
This film features some of the best characters ever created. That's it. Nuff said.
Cloud, Tifa, Vincent, Yuffie, Cid, Barrett, Kadaj, Sephiroth...From the good at heart to the sinister badasses, you find them all here.
Characters - 9.5/10

Considering all scores, I rate FF VII Advent Children at 9.7/10.

Advent Children becomes the Final word in Fantasy with a near perfect score of 9.7/10

Reviewer : foogarky.

Suggestions :

This film is made for the big screen. Since that was impossible for me, I watched it on a 29" TV. It is still an awesome experience. Try to avoid watching it on a computer or worse on a PSP. God help the fool who buys this film on a UMD to watch it on his tiny screen PSP.

Walk down the right back alley in Sin City and you can find anything.


Sin City is a graphic novel series pencilled and penned by Frank Miller, one of the finest comic writers of today. The American writer is known for his most popular work, The Dark Knight Returns, widely regarded as the greatest Batman story ever told. His other works, all of them receiving the highest critical acclaim, include Ronin, 300, Daredevil and Elektra.
Robert Rodriguez is the director of the Mariachi trilogy of films : El Mariachi, Desperado and Once upon a time in Mexico. His films are hyperkinetic gun ballets, influenced by the work of John Woo.
Quentin Tarantino is the director of critically acclaimed cult films like Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs and (my favorite) the two voulme Kill Bill, a homage to ultra-violent and bloody Japanese movies and Anime.


The Sin City series of graphic novels is narrated and visualised in a film noir style. It recounts the lives of several inhabitants of Basin City, usually referred to as Sin City. Basin City is a fictional place in an alternate reality created by Frank Miller. There are no shades of grey here. Like all fim noir, Sin City too has only black and white (white and black are metaphors for good and evil). I would have to mention that Sin City takes black and white to the extremes. Basin City is an imaginary city but it seems to be constructed by taking American society and culture and distilling only the worst of it to create a whole. In other words, Sin City represents the worst in American society. In fact, Basin City makes Gotham city of the Batman universe look like the most peaceful place on earth. It certainly does not present a pretty picture.
So, how does a comic that is widely known to be very adult in nature get adapted faithfully into film? For an audience used to kiddie comics like Spider-Man, Superman et cetera, would an adult comic-to-movie adaptation be acceptable? Considering that the movie was in the hands of Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez, the answer is a resounding YES!

Story and Screenplay

Since Sin City was originally published in serial form in thirteen parts, the screenplay of this movie was written around four parts : The Hard Goodbye, The Customer is Always Right, The Big Fat Kill, That Yellow Bastard. Having already seen the The Customer is Always Right segment almost a year ago (it was made as a short film and was floating around the internet on P2P networks) I thought I knew what to expect from the whole movie. Boy, was I wrong!
The Customer is Always Right forms just the opening scene of the movie before the opening credits. It soon hits you in the face : The movie follows a style of story telling that I haven't seen in Hollywood movies for years. It was hard to believe that I was actually watching a mainstream Hollywood movie. Narrated in the first person by the protagonists, it sounds like the classic film noir private eye movies of the '40s and '50s. The dialogue comprises of lines from the graphic novel. Although The Hard Goodbye, The Big Fat Kill, That Yellow Bastard were seperate standalone stories, the movie screenplay successfully joins them together, intertwining the different threads to form a complex, non linear story. The movie is filled to the brim with incredible lines, each of which could be used as memorable quotes.

Cast, Characters and Acting

If having Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez wasn't enough, the movie has a stellar cast as well.
Josh Hartnett, Mickey Rourke, Elijah Wood, Rutger Hauer, Clive Owen, Benicio Del Toro, Michael Clarke Duncan, Devon Aoki (Yowza! *drool*), Brittanny Murphy, Bruce Willis, Jessica Alba and Michael Madsen : All of them bearing an uncanny resemblance to the charcaters they play, this must be the dream cast of any movie. They look like they stepped out of the comic into the real world.

The characters which stand out are :

Bruce Willis as Detective John Hartigan, the aging good cop with a heart condition. He seems to be the only character who is a good guy (or white, in film noir terms).
Clive Owenas Dwight McCarthy.
Mickey Rourke gives an incredible performance as the psychotic Marv. His performance is the best IMO among the male characters.
But my favorite is Devon Aoki as Miho. Miho is a mute, incredibly badass japanese chick who is armed with Dual Katanas, Swastika shaped Shurikens and a japanese Longbow. She serves as the protectoress of the whores of Old Town and is capable of decimating a fully armed army. Do I have to mention she's incredibly hot too?

Special Effects

The film was made entirely using green screen technology and high definition digital cameras. All the backgrounds and effects were digitally created and added later. The film looks gorgeous, with each frame being a work of art. The entire movie is in black&white looking exactly like the comic and also as a film noir. Using the latest techniques it was possible to create the movie looking exactly like the comic did. The FX was used to create shots that look impossible to shoot using conventional techniques.
The makeup is remarkable too. In additon to all the FX used to make the movie look exactly like the comic, the actors had to look exactly like the characters too. Check out the faces of Mickey Rourke and Benicio Del Toro in the movie.

Action, Gore and Violence

With great pains taken to recreate the comic feel to the movie, would the movie have included all the exaggerated violence of the comic too? I'm happy to say that the film makers decided to make the movie R-rated and include all the ultra-violence. Since the movie is in black & white, the violence seems diluted, but only very, very slightly. It is still incredibly violent with realistic gun wounds, exit wounds and hands, legs, heads, faces dismembered by katanas and shurikens. All the blood is colored bright white and and in one case for the Yellow Bastard character, the blood is yellow. On a whole the violence is not graphic like Kill Bill.
But, the violence is very disturbing. More on that later...

Considering all this, in retrospect, I will go ahead and say :

Sin City is the best movie to come out of Hollywood this year.
Sin City is the most faithful comic-to-movie adaptation made.

After watching crap in the cinemas like Flightplan and Red Eye, finally Hollywood comes out with a movie worthy of respect. But there was another movie this year which I thoroughly enjoyed : Batman Begins, another perfect comic-to-movie adaptation. So, which is a better movie? Sin City or Batman Begins? As a die hard Batman fan I am tempted to say Batman Begins, but I grudgingly accept that Sin City is a superior movie.



Enjoyment Factor : (Mature content and possible spoilers)

Sin City is a graphic novel which comes with the warning "for mature readers only" on the cover. So, what does one have to expect from the movie?
If you are underage or are easily affected by disturbing content , then this is certainly not the movie for you to watch.
If you are a gore junkie, then this movie might not give you full satisfaction because of the artistic depiction of violence. There is no raw violence. For that, Kill Bill would be a better watch.
If you like movies that constantly push the envelope and break all conventions without giving a damn to censorship laws, then this movie has enough disturbing content to satisfy you.

Sadomasochism abounds in the movie :

"Nancy Callahan, age 11
And she'll be raped and slashed to ribbons"
Det. John Hartigan has to take down Rourk Jr., a paedophile who gets a "hard on" hearing the screams of his young, innocent victims. Hartigan gives him a deserving puishment by, "I take his weapons away, Both of them", shooting his hand which held the gun and the other weapon, his dick.
Later on, during the third act, Rourk Jr. is back but as a yellow skinned freak known as the Yellow Bastard who now has a reconstructed "weapon" by some advanced medical techniques. And this time, as he tries to rape Nancy Callahan(this time as a grown up nineteen year old) again, Hartigan castrates him with his bare hands and mashes his head to a pulp "After a while, all I'm doing is pounding wet chunks of bone into the floor boards". Moral : Perverted freaks get their just desserts. Very satisfying, indeed.

Kevin is an almost super-powered, emotionless guy with long claws. He kidnaps whores only to eat them alive and then display their heads as trophies. And this cannibalism has a twisted logic behind it. "He didn't just eat their bodies. He ate their souls. He felt the touch of God almighty" Very twisted, indeed.


Sin City, with all the excellent depictions of unmentionable sins, is a SIN I'll gladly commit to watch.


Reviewer : foogarky

Cinemastan goes live today!