Since catching the first FPS (also reviewed),I've been keen to return to the franchise,but had to keep pushing it back due to offline things. Shoving everything else to the side,I got set to glance at the scorpion again.
View on the film:
Unlike the first film, Eureka present an unbelievably poor transfer.Clearly a VHS rip,the hard English subtitles don't translate scenes where songs are sung, and the image is studded with blotches and black lines.
Opening by looking down into the solitary confinement pit Matsu has been in for a year, returning co-writer/(with Fumio Konami and Hiro Matsuda) director Shun'ya Ito returns to the series he made his debut on,and with debuting cinematographer Masao Shimizu takes the outline of the prison sentence in the first,and extends it into the truly startling. Tracking Matsu and her fellow six convicts on the run from cops across a mountain wilderness which leaves them standing out like figures in a landscape, Ito and Shimizu lock the blunt-force violence of the WIP genre behind bars of hyper-stylisation surrealism, exploding with waves of ravishing colours weaving a fantasy atmosphere (!) hitting in bullet shots of blistering blues,oranges and reds peaking at the past of Matsu's fellow convicts, all captured in bewitching rolling Dutch angles, shotgun-fired whip-pans/first person take-downs,and surrealist dissolves.
For a genre not known for being subtle, the writers slice their WIP adaptation of Tooru Shinohara's Manga with a distinctively raw feminist cut, via a focus on the plight of Matsu and her fellow convicts, whilst turning the (all-male) hard-nosed cops and guards of the first film into mocked, weakly minded, attempted rulers of their lives. Speaking just five words in the whole film, returning Meiko Kaji gives an immense performance as Matsu, bringing out in her simmering body language and downcast face the hurt, but still resilient spirit of Matsu to attack the guards with her scorpion sting.
View on the film:
Unlike the first film, Eureka present an unbelievably poor transfer.Clearly a VHS rip,the hard English subtitles don't translate scenes where songs are sung, and the image is studded with blotches and black lines.
Opening by looking down into the solitary confinement pit Matsu has been in for a year, returning co-writer/(with Fumio Konami and Hiro Matsuda) director Shun'ya Ito returns to the series he made his debut on,and with debuting cinematographer Masao Shimizu takes the outline of the prison sentence in the first,and extends it into the truly startling. Tracking Matsu and her fellow six convicts on the run from cops across a mountain wilderness which leaves them standing out like figures in a landscape, Ito and Shimizu lock the blunt-force violence of the WIP genre behind bars of hyper-stylisation surrealism, exploding with waves of ravishing colours weaving a fantasy atmosphere (!) hitting in bullet shots of blistering blues,oranges and reds peaking at the past of Matsu's fellow convicts, all captured in bewitching rolling Dutch angles, shotgun-fired whip-pans/first person take-downs,and surrealist dissolves.
For a genre not known for being subtle, the writers slice their WIP adaptation of Tooru Shinohara's Manga with a distinctively raw feminist cut, via a focus on the plight of Matsu and her fellow convicts, whilst turning the (all-male) hard-nosed cops and guards of the first film into mocked, weakly minded, attempted rulers of their lives. Speaking just five words in the whole film, returning Meiko Kaji gives an immense performance as Matsu, bringing out in her simmering body language and downcast face the hurt, but still resilient spirit of Matsu to attack the guards with her scorpion sting.