One Piece: Stampede - Review

Luffy and the Straw Hat Pirates head towards a remote island for a secret buccaneer-only bash where the main attraction is a hidden prized possession of Gold Roger. In order to claim it, they have to partake in an all-out battle royale, including crossing swords against some of their fellow members of the "Worst Generation". However, someone is literally lurking in the depths and awaiting to pounce upon the greedy prey. ONE PIECE: STAMPEDE is sadly a significant step down for the mega popular anime franchise's film division after the preceding entry, the predictable but highly raucous ONE PIECE FILM: GOLD. It has several of the main ingredients necessary to make a great shonen film: superb animation, excellent voice acting, and an epic music score. But the film is completely let down by a very lame script that cripples the smooth sailing of its opening moments. The movie loses all of its steam once the big bad Douglas Bullet unearths himself and, after a brief yet very thrilling scuffle, spends the rest of the running time showing off his literal and figurative plot armor and essentially saying "come at me, bro". It then just becomes a big one-sided brawl of punches, kicks, stomps and superpowers where nothing really matters until a great master plan is drawn up, that being having a bunch of the strongest characters come together to make a weak spot by all punching together. And mind you, a good chunk of this fighting happens during a strict time limit of five minutes that somehow stretches itself to 35 minutes in real time. The movie tries to hide its severe shortcomings by including a lot of fan service, bringing out every ally, villain, or side character they can muster for a cameo so you can point them out and clap in delight. But even the most gullible of otakus will laugh at this weak attempt at appeasement, especially when two noteworthy sword-wielding badasses both come in, perform two slash attacks, and then spirit themselves away from the proceedings. There's also zilch in the character development department save for Usopp but even that is just microwaved scraps from past material that fans know and love by heart. I gave this film two tries in the theater to wow me in any way; I originally set out on this ordeal chiefly to watch both the sub and dub versions but it became more important once the first viewing left me and the audience less than enthused. While my appreciation did increase for the technical aspects of the film the second time around, the true meat of it remained bitter. Similar to the poor film entries of Pokémon and DragonBall Z, you might be able to stomach ONE PIECE: STAMPEDE and have glimmers of amusement but there are far better options available to watch. And to those who might be wondering, yes, I have come around on Colleen Clinkenbeard's portrayal of Luffy but it is still hard to top Mayumi Tanaka.


FINAL REVIEW: 2 / 5

Gemini Man - Review

Stop me if you seen this before: an expert assassin (Will Smith) working for the shadowy parts of the US government wants to retire after one last job only to end up on the run because some suited bad guys believe he knows too much. Along the way he ropes in a pretty looking woman (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and calls up a goofy old comrade (Benedict Wong) for some help. Oh, you did see that plot before. Okay, well but here's where GEMINI MAN really snatches the rug out from under you: the top hired killer sent after the golden gunman ends up being a clone of him! You have seen that too? And you can easily predict out all of the film's future plot points and other "groundbreaking" twists it has in store? Well, the real question now is why did these Hollywood filmmakers waste so much time, money and resources on such a painfully trite action flick?


GEMINI MAN never gets off the blocks and become a truly satisfying experience, especially when viewed in the way it was intended by its so-called visionary director. Ang Lee continues to smear his good name by adding fuel to his fiery passion for 3D filmmaking and high frame rate. Both add zilch to the blah pic besides making you endlessly wish you were watching something better. Sure, there are a few fine visual wows like a minigun slaughtering up a convenience store or a man slo-mo walking through fire but those literally come at the very end of the film. The rest of 120 frames per second enhanced scenes are either taxing displays of mundanity and trivial dialogue or action sequences that are too frenetic to behold and severely lack gravitas. The hand-to-hand fights are really when it all falls apart; the supposed film technology of the future turns CQC into a glorified slap fight. Will Smith and the rest of the cast try to make do with what they got but they can't elevate the paint-by-numbers script. Additionally, the whole brouhaha with the de-aging of Smith ends up for naught. He's just not convincing playing a 23-year-old version of his main character, often acting more like a 15-year-old teen that is ready to pee his pants at a moment's notice, plus you can audibly hear his artificially sweetened and carefully edited voice from the rest of the sound design like a bad dub. GEMINI MAN is so mockable and such a brain dead idea to produce in this manner that it would have been better off as a fake movie within a movie.


FINAL REVIEW: 2 / 5