Ryuhei Kitamura's comic book adaptation may look incredibly stylish, with a great set and wonderful lighting - but my god, is it slow! I chose to watch the extended version of this HK Video (Taiwan) release which also came with a snipped theatrical release for a better viewing of Kitamura's vision, but what a long, drawn-out affair that was...
Pretty much just set in the one room - a futuristic jail cell - the first 35 minutes crawls along with drab character development on 2 ex-prisoners who don't really ooze much on-screen personality, before a quick fight explodes between them, ending within seconds before taking us back into a crawl!
It would at least another 30 minutes before anything close to exciting came about, which, at this stage - I couldn't really care about.
Alive is most certainly not one of Ryuhei's finest moments. While it still looks very independent, or even like a TV movie, it does have some nice ideas and plenty of great cinematography - but ultimately, it is a bore-fest of a film that is far from the likes of Versus and Azumi and will only appeal to fans of the comic book or those who enjoy long, talky Japanese drama with plenty of moody shouting, and nice visuals.
After the 1 hour mark, things start to move along a little quicker (a little) bringing in some horror and action elements that are actually pretty sweet - but for most viewers by this point, its far too late! The end fight featuring Tak Sakaguchi is worth fast forwarding to I guess...
Overall: I want to say its like The Matrix meets The Cube, but honestly, you wouldn't be missing much if you didn't catch it!
