K-20: Kaijin nijû mensô den (2008)
I’ve been a little AWOL from here for a while. If you follow me on Livejournal you probably already know, but I’ve been under the weather the last little while. I was sick a couple weeks ago, then I was better for a week, but last week my cold decided to come back and turn into a chest infection (complete with losing my voice for a few days) and pink eye.
I’m a lot better now thanks to DRUGS. My pink eye is making my eyes hurt and a bit goopy still, but my voice is nearly back to normal and I only have a bit of a cough left. Yay.
I’ve watched a few movies since Ninja Assassin, but nothing too special. I did quite enjoy Chicago though. That was pretty awesome. And Angels & Demons was so much better than The Da Vinci Code – remember, I hated it.
Anyways, my region free DVD player seems to have decided to call it quits, so I watched this on my sister’s laptop while sitting on the couch. It’s so awesome to just be able to lounge around on the couch and surf the internet. Hee.
It’s 1949 and World War II never happened. Nikola Tesla has just won a Nobel Prize rather than dying in obscurity and the Japanese Empire is an undying aristocracy where the rich sip tea out of bone china, while the poor die in the gutters. K-20, the Fiend with Twenty Faces, steals from the rich and gives to himself. But now, on the eve of the marriage between society princess, Yoko Hashiba, and chief of police, Kogoro Akechi, the fiend frames simple circus acrobat Hekichi Endo (Takeshi Kaneshiro) for his crimes…
Have you ever up and randomly bought a film simply because of the lead actor? Or because the complete chaos (as in ‘it’s crowded and there are so many things going on at once’) of the movie poster?
Or because of a half a line of text?
Well, I am guilty right now of doing all three.
I added this to my shopping cart on YesAsia after three things – 1. Takeshi Kaneshiro 2. The cluttered yet awesome movie poster 3. ‘It’s 1949. Word War II has been avoided.’
I’m going to be honest here – I love Takeshi Kaneshiro. He’s one helluva great actor who can do romance, action, comedy, musicals, etc – and in several different languages. And he’s a hottie to boot. I’ll watch him in pretty much anything (though I am still not over the fact that they dubbed over his voice in Red Cliff…).
Another thing I love – AUs. I love the idea of stories being told of alternate timelines. What if such-and-such didn’t happen? What if such-and-such did happen? How would that effect the world?
K-20 shows a reality where World War II never happened. Japan remained an imperial empire.
Another thing that was AU that I loved to see – Tesla being a hero. Hell yeah, Team Tesla! … My sister and I are Team Tesla. HE WAS ROBBED.
The story itself was really well put together. It’s almost a Robin Hood kind of tale. The film was full of everything you’d want in a movie. Action, comedy, suspense, eye candy, drama, and a strong hearted female lead. She was much more than the rich girl going to be married to the brilliant detective. She had dreams, and was quite kickass.
It was well rounded, and exciting. It was close to two and a half hours long, but it never got boring.
Rating: 5/5
Oh, lastly I must be completely shallow and mention that Takeshi looked dashing as usual, and the actor who played Akechi was quite handsome. I uhh… Kind of found myself starring at all the prettiness on the screen…
