Versus in (2000) is a action,horror,fantasy and comedy movie direct by Japanese director Ryuhei Kitamura whom i really like after watching his American work like The Midnight Meat Train and No One Lives.After watching this movie i have to say what a interesting way to get into the mainstream audience and the world.Versus is a B-grade movie and it not trying to do something other than that,it chessy,over the top and ridiculously amazing.For a movie it has everything you dream of : yakuza zombie,John Woo awesome gun play,wuxia sword play,an bass ass main character and a cast full of people acting like their on some kind of heavy drug.As an anime fan like myself i really like the plot of this movie and i wish they explore it more but too bad it end with a cliffhanger.

Those crazy Chinese, they sure know how to make crazy films. I had a friend once who went to China- he said they didn't have cars but used dragons to drive about instead. Crazy! Especially as dragons are extinct. Versus isn't really a real film, it's really based on an assortment of fight em ups for the computer. Games such as Mortil Come Back World, Road Fighter 2: Championship Edition, and Streets Of Age. The crazy twist comes via the fact that we have not only humans fighting each other, but other creatures too- con men, vampires, weredogs, werecats, zomboids, Bagginses, people of the Aisle Of Man, Santa etc. The basic plot sees a Chinese mafia man re-stealing his girlfriend from a rival mafia man who had re-re-stolen her from the man who his re-stealing her from him. The baddie sends his most trusted warriors after the goodies in a progression of difficulty, starting with a brown belt unarmed amateur, working up through expert bearded swordsmen, giants, and Miyagi, all the way to entire platoons of tanks armed with nukes. Our hero is a decent fighter, but he can only take so much and is ripped to ribbons. Luckily though he is killed in an ancient Indian burial ground on a full moon and comes back as a zomboid. He then has to fight his way out of the Underworld against Medusa, Hitler, and Samuel Peyps only to try to re-re-re-rescue his girlfriend (who has been cheating on him with an Eskimo). Not a lot of the film made sense, especially the parts that weren't in English, and most of the effects and acting left much to be desired. I suppose I can't complain given that the film was made for 10 Yen, but when you see that Parannoying Actively was only made for 80 dollars there really is not excuse.Best Scene: When one of the bad guys is being kicked into the air you can see the string and pulley system being operated by a man in the trees in the background. If you freeze frame that part and zoom in you can see that it is none other than 1980s cast off Rick Moranis.

In the first Matrix, Morpheus says to Neo, "C'mon, stop trying to hit me and hit me!" Then, The Matrix went on to spawn an innumerable list of rip-offs and wannabes, including this over-long piece from Japan. All of those things that The Matrix influenced, however, including its own terrible sequels, seemed to have forgotten that line. Mindless action is fun, and has its place. It can also be incredibly frustrating when the sequences are without consequence. Even martial arts movies with terrible story lines at least have set-pieces that actually move the characters towards some objective. For most of the action in this movie, not so much. This is two hours of people in the woods fighting, and the director never seems to really want anyone to die, and even if they do he CERTAINLY wants to make sure he can fit in some more people to join the not-quite carnage.So here's the deal. It may be considered lazy reviewing to try and write a summary for a movie without figuring out what all of the groups involved in the story are, but in this case I pretty much consider it the point of my review that the specifics in this movie do not matter, at all. Some people arrive in a forest. Gangsters, cops, prison escapees, a female hostage, some necromancer semi-vampire eternal dead dude, and zombies. They all fight each other. The point is that this is some recurring, eternal conflict of good and evil, or at least two sides. The main prison escapee dude is the brother of the necromancer dude, and they have had this fight before, but this time around he's "changed" so he might be able to win (read: he's going to win). The female hostage is a seer with the blood of Resurrection that operates in the forest, the Forest of Resurrection, to resurrect things. These things are made clear with what Uwe Boll-like writing there is between the majority of the Michael Bay-like action scenes that drags the playlength of this movie to two hours (a full hour forty over its necessary playlength). I compare the writing to Uwe Boll because the same basic points are reiterated again and again and again, as if the audience has no ability to connect one revelation to another. "Oh this is the Forest of Resurrection, you say? Then this must be the Forest of Resurrection! And if it's the Forest of Resurrection, than those dead guys must be alive! Oh, so THAT'S why those dead guys are alive. Well since those dead guys are alive, we must be in the Forest of Resurrection. What's that, you say? Well it's where we are!" I compare the action to Michael Bay because it's way too in love with the boomerang cam, and because ninety percent of the movement and editing ultimately comes to the same end result: posturing.Let me put it this way: this movie should have been only forty minutes long, but it could have easily been just fifteen, if any character would actually pull the damn trigger or stab the other person when they actually had a chance. Instead, as soon as any character comes into the position to be eliminated, the person he's fighting against just grins and sneers in pleased victory. It was okay the first, erm, three or four times it happened. By a quarter of the way through the movie, however, there was no longer any excuse. If any of these people actually wanted to win the fight, they would have long beforehand. "Stop trying to hit me and hit me"--the motivations of all of the characters are shot when they're no longer fighting for any real reason but just 'cause, you know, they're in this forest thing, of Resurrection y'see, and, have to, do ... stuff. Meh. Roll out next action sequence! Oh, and the Resurrection and re-incarnation plot points pretty much guarantee that this whole thing will never, technically, end. Which becomes the point! Oh God, why?! Why watch a two hour long movie about mindless action scenes with no consequence only to have the point of it be that the action scenes are never supposed to end, it's just posturing for ever and ever and ever? Oh. 'Cause the action's neat. And, like, action-y and stuff. Alright.Not an entire waste of time, but you can honestly fast forward through the majority of this movie and miss nothing.--PolarisDiB

I took notice of Versus due to the hype surrounding it, hence my chasing it down. Finally grabbing hold of it, I watched it with my valentine... a right move, since this movie is not to be watched alone.Let's get the "plot" out of the way. Two escaped prisoners. An ominous Forest of Resurrection where the dead return to life as zombies. A band of yakuza there to pick up the escapees. ACTION ENSUES.To start, "Versus" is possibly the blender out of which poured out many, MANY film genres: absurd comedy, action, martial arts, horror/zombie, fantasy, superpowers, gun-fu, what-have-you... it's a mix and match of various genres that we are all aware of. There is enough gore to keep it interesting, enough sword fights to polish it, enough bullets to put John Woo to shame, enough wacky characters (the entire yakuza team) to keep you laughing on and on, zombies with guns, random characters that just pop out of nowhere, TO BE BLUNT: IT'S INSANE.You have your yakuza, the quirky, sanity-defying gangsters hanging around; you have your "badass hero" who just doesn't care about anything, you have the "obligatory female lead" who gets slapped around throughout the movie, you have the calm-as-hell villain who is borderline incredible, you have your staggering, gun-wielding, throat-ripping zombies, you have shootouts, gunfights with both shooters at point-blank-range to each other, sword fights, one-on-one unarmed combat, wacky cops that somehow get into the mix, you have people stabbed, shot, sliced apart, blown to bits, you have everything you can ask for in an entertaining flick! My advice - get this one! Get it, get a few friends, watch it with an open mind and you'll get almost 2 hours' worth of entertainment!