Anime Classic Goes Live Action

Crying Freeman is not redily available in video stores in the U.S., but I happened to run across a Japanese laser disc of this American/Canadian/French/Japanese production based on the hugely popular Japanese Manga of the same name. I figured I’d provide the scoop before it mysteriously appeared on the shelves of your local video store . . .

Like the Fist of the North Star film that came and went on the "new release" shelf with little fanfare, Crying Freeman is another moderately-budgeted, English language, live-action version of a Japanese comic book. How is this happening and why? I don’t know. Seems to me that if you were going to make a movie for Japanese viewers based on a Japanese comic book, you would shoot the thing in Japanese! I guess that’s why I haven’t made any movies . . . Anyway, while the film has been around since 1995, it has yet to appear in the U.S. Must be some sort of legal wrangling involved because Freeman is better than your usual direct-to-video fare.

Once a peaceful student of pottery, artisan Yo is kidnapped by an ancient secret society – The Sons of the Dragon – and brainwashed into becoming the ultimate assassin (shades of La Femme Nikita). Yo becomes trained in the art of killing and picks up his righteous trademark full-body dragon tattoo. And although he kills on demand, a small part of him still regrets it. So he cries each time he must take a life. Thus, Crying Freeman. The drama begins once Freeman is ordered to kill an innocent woman who he has fallen in love with.

Being a fan of the Crying Freeman comic book, I was pleased at how true to form the film is. It closely follows the first "Freeman" graphic novel (with the exception of Rae Dawn Chong’s cop character who seems to disappear about half way through the film). And although it maintains the sense of melancholy and longing that is a great part of the comic’s appeal, the film does hold back on the comic’s graphic sex and violence . . . I guess you can’t win 'em all. The performances are adequate for being shot in a language that was destined for dubbing anyway, my one gripe being Mark Dacascos (best known as the non-Scott Wolf Double Dragon and The Crow in the new TV series) as Freeman. Sure, he looks good and has a modicum of kung-fu, but he says his lines like a first-year reading student.

As far as the look of the film is concerned, director Christophe Gans (who did the first episode in the H.P. Lovecraft anthology film Necronomicon) steals every single trick in John Woo’s book - from slo-mo gun fights to hyper-kinetic dollies - but still doesn’t quite capture the soul that Woo injects into every frame.

Overall, you could do much worse than Crying Freeman when adapting Japanese comics to film. It’s a pleasant diversion and might be worth renting if it shows up on the shelves of your local video store. Especially if you’re a fan of the comic.

There’s also a Hong Kong version of Crying Freeman that came out several years ago, called Dragon From Russia that is absolutely spectacular. It puts this version to shame and is absolutely worth hunting down.

- Punky McScrubb