Hot on the heels of the
first film, GANTZ: PERFECT ANSWER arrives within three months of its
predecessor, boasting the same cast of young attractive stars and the same
flashy production values, while also clocking it at a hefty 150 minutes,
crammed to the gills with exposition and superfluous characters, rather than an
engaging narrative or exciting action.
After struggling my way
through the first film, which spent two and a half hours on set-up and
introductions, only to end just when things were starting to get interesting, I
was wary of this sequel. At the same time, however, I had come so far and being
unfamiliar with the source material, just had to find out where the story was
going. In response to my wariness, GPA (for brevity's sake) opens with a brisk,
succinct 90-second recap of everything that happened in the first film. Why the
filmmakers couldn't have covered the same ground in, say, the first hour of
GANTZ and spared us a second film we can but wonder, but for those in need,
this is what happened - spoilers ahead for the first film:
University student Kurono
(Ninomaya Kazunari) is reunited with childhood buddy Kato (Matsuyama Kenichi)
on a subway platform, only to both be hit by a train trying to help some poor
sap who fell on the tracks. They are transported to an apartment where a large
black sphere named Gantz enlists them and others to play a series of games,
killing aliens. If they die in the game, they die for real, but if they survive
they score points. 100 points allows them either to return home with an erased
memory or save a fallen comrade. When a large, 1000-armed extra-terrestrial
kills Kato, Kurano vows to earn enough points to bring his friend back...
And so to GPA...
Five months have passed and
Kurono is well on his way to 100 points. Between missions, GANTZ allows him to
assume his normal life, where Tae (Yoshitaka Yuriko) is desperate to start a
relationship but understands Kato's "disappearance" has him
pre-occupied. Meanwhile, a small black orb appears and assigns murderous
missions to a former popstar, while a detective (Yamada Takayuki) investigates
numerous sightings of recently deceased members of the public, including Kato.
However, when a teammate hits 100 points and opts to resurrect Kato, they
realize an alien imposter has adopted Kato's form and is also hunting for the
black orb.
For the first hour or so GPA
totally engages its audience, introducing intriguing new characters such as
Eriko the femme fatale, and a mysterious gang of gun-toting aliens. The script
also expands the plot in interesting directions that culminate in the film's
strongest set piece - an extended showdown on a packed commuter train between
the Gantz players armed with their sonic pistols, the suited alien gang
brandishing katana swords that morph from their hands, Eriko's lone killer and
Yamada's nameless detective, all gunning for the same target: poor,
unsuspecting Tae. It's an excellent sequence that not only features some
entertaining action as rival players clash and innocent bystanders are gunned
down in scores, but it also ties all the different story threads together with
surprising efficiency.
However, this marks the high
point of GPA and it never gets as good as this again, in the 90 minutes that
follow. There is an impressively-staged fight towards the end, where Kato and
Kurono both engage in a street brawl with Alien Kato, that requires Matsuyama
Kenichi to fight both himself and Ninomaya simultaneously for a solid five
minutes, but elsewhere the CGI varies wildly in quality, and is at its worst
when depicting characters leaping Spider-Man-like from rooftop to rooftop. The
plot steadily unravels in the second half, culminating in a finale that is
mostly contradictory when not totally nonsensical and leads to a lengthy
epilogue that is nauseatingly sentimental and terribly written. Director Sato
Shinsuke may have a passable grasp of visual aesthetics, but both GANTZ films
show up his startling inability to employ subtlety, nuance or suggestion in his
work. Where a nod, gesture or telling wink would have ably sufficed, Sato
repeatedly insists on spoon-feeding his audience needless exposition.
Noted, these films are based
on an equally long-winded series of comic books, but staying faithful to the
source material at the expense of delivering an entertaining final product is
counter-productive - and I have been reliably informed that in other areas of
the script, the writers have significantly changed the story to suit their
needs, thus rendering this defense redundant.
Most criminal of all is that
a film with such an excessive running time all but completely wastes the
talents of its cast, most notably Yamada Takayuki, whose detective has
criminally little to do, other than occasionally emerge from the shadows and
point a gun at someone. Admittedly his character in the comics is even more
insignificant, but if the writers are going to beef up the part and cast a
notable actor like Yamada, they should at least get their money's worth and
have him do something. It's a potentially interesting character and his
perspective is perhaps closest to that of the audience, but he is all-but
ignored from the moment he is introduced. He isn't even given a name.
While there are no immediate
plans for a third instalment, GANTZ: PERFECT ANSWER is left conveniently
open-ended, refusing to explain numerous gaping plot holes, while breaking its
own rules to resurrect key characters ahead of further adventures. We can but pray
for more ruthless scripting next time out, however, because of the five hours
now committed to film, GANTZ delivers precious little action and far too much
meaningless talk about balls.