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Category:    Home > Reviews > Martail Arts Cycle > Azumi 2 (2005/Asiavision/UrbanVision DVD)

Azumi 2 (2005/Asiavision/UrbanVision DVD)

 

Picture: C     Sound: C+     Extras: C     Film: C

 

 

After so many good Samurai films being released on DVD of late looking good, old and new, the disappointments are even harder to sit through.  That is exactly the case with Shusuke Kaneko’s Azumi 2 (2005) a by-the-numbers effort about Feudal Japan that plays like formula, has some of the lamer fights we have seen of late and is quickly forgotten.

 

We never saw the first film, which might be for the better if it is anything like this and no, none of this is so significant that you need to see the original.  If the attempt is to turn this into a franchise, the producers are fighting a losing battle.  The prominence of female characters is as fake as an episode of Xena and even the supposedly super-skills of the tile character never works.  At least it has the guts to be graphic and not too pretentious about it and we have seen worse, but even diehard fans will likely find this lame.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image is so soft, you’d think you were watching a bad TV movie, with inconsistent color, poor depth and lame detail.  The Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0 options, English & Japanese (four in all) are flat and any idea of a soundfield in the 5.1 mixes are never realized.  English dubbing is especially poor.  Extras include stills, a bunch of trailers for other AsiaVision releases and a featurette Through The Eyes Of Azumi.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


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