SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Executscan Expected more

SeeQuant Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Kamila Bell This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Mickey Micklon This is easily the worst, most confusing movie I've seen in quite some time."Miyuki Minazuki" (Makiko Esumi), known professionally as "Stray Cat", is part of the Assassin's Guild, and ranked #3 in it.She is given the job to kill the top assassin in the guild, known as "Hundred Eyes", and takes it.This movie is very hard to follow, especially if you must use subtitles if you can't find a dubbed version.The acting is horrible. Many times, the actors are overly dramatic, and act as if they should be on stage. There is a lot of rambling monologues that are quite confusing. None of the actors had any chemistry and appeared to be forced to work together on screen.As for the camera work, it's not perfect. There are some shots with pans that are too dramatic and make no sense. Other shots are real good, and help with the story on a visual level.For the subject of the story, there is very little violence and no blood in this movie. There is even little gun play in the film. Violence is kept to a minimum as well.The soundtrack is forgettable. It reminded me of music heard in movies from the 1970's. I didn't feel that the music helped enhance the scenes at all.There are some interesting visuals in this movie. At times I felt as if I was watching a stage play. A few times, the camera work helped enhance the scenes, but most of the time the shots were real typical.This movie lacked the ability to keep my attention through out. I caught myself looking away from my computer screen numerous times because I was completely bored with the movie. I watched this movie on Hulu, and got even more confused when my screen saver popped up.It was a hard movie to follow, especially since I had to read English subtitles. I really had a hard time following what was going on in this movie because my attention was focused on the bottom of the screen. It may have been the translation, but the dialog was pretty confusing at times, and I couldn't understand what was going on.Unless you are into this type of movie, I have to say skip it. It isn't for every one.

MisterWhiplash Seijun Suzuki has made great films, and at least some very good ones. And oddly enough some of those films were done not with a completely free hand. Suzuki had resistance (and even got fired during the editing) with Branded to Kill, his 1967 masterpiece that serves as the sort of inspiration for this *extremely* loose remake/re-telling. But maybe that served him better than here, which is a little like Lynch with Inland Empire: the floodgates are open, and it's high time to just let whatever s***'s inside fly out. Only unlike a Lynchian DV mescaline trip into brain-tubes, this is like a Kabuki fever dream cooked up by the samurai in Lowry's dream scenes in Brazil. It's an artist working without a net and, frankly, without much of a story or close to identifiable actors, either.If Pistol Opera weren't made by a director who has a sure hand with his craft, if not in his old age a mastery, then it would be just about unwatchable. This is something sad to say as I would have loved to consider Pistol Opera a luxurious expressionist piece, something that is so assured with creating a mood that it doesn't need a firm story. But in this story, whatever there is of it, about a female No. 3 killer (in Branded it was male) who has to face off against the Hundred Eyes killer and the No. 1 killer while fending off the pleas of a little girl who just wants to be a killer too, it needs some kind of focus from time to time. After a few scenes of strange set up where No. 3 faces her "boss" of sorts who wears a mouth mask and talk in abstract dialog, the film just goes off into tangents... and then more of them...Some of this, perhaps, was meant to be parody, a delirious send-up of both Yakuza thrillers and Kabuki theater, and its shot half on location (there is, in one of the most satisfying and crazy scenes, a chase between No. 3 and a man in a skewed wheelchair along a riverbank), half in studio. But it's not very funny, and its not really all-encompassing as a work of surrealism. I was taken in by its cinematography and sets and a perversely awesome array of colors, and make no mistake there's rarely a frame of the film that doesn't look gorgeous. But there needs to be more than just fantastical camera moves. There's a shoot-out towards the end that not only breaks the 180 degree rule (you know the one if you're familiar with basic camera direction) but gives it a middle finger with a silver bullet right between the face.But there needs to be something else, something that Branded to Kill and Tokyo Drifter just had instinctively, which is soul, a purpose in its subversion. Too much of Pistol Opera feels like exercise without result, like in those overlong scenes with the woman talking to the camera about God knows what. I expected the unexpected, but I didn't expect to be... bewildered to disappointment.

nedwalton I first saw the preview for Pistol Opera on several Japanese DVDs I had the pleasure of viewing. It was the vivid imagery that captured my attention not to mention a very attractive leading lady. Now what followed was an amazing journey through the world of Stray Cat, a hired gun with a love for her pistol, engaged (reluctantly at first)in a competition to be #1 among the top gunslingers. Simple enough, right? WRONG!!!! What follows is a film that keeps your fingers on the rewind button, your mouth wide open and your eyes ready to bug out of your skull. A simple skeleton of a plot is covered with layers of sexuality (subtle, and in your face), violence, and just a whole bunch of WTF (WT is for "What The" you can figure the rest out) moments. I enjoyed it in the same way that we all have our guilty pleasures, but I will admit that some of the scenes and displays may go beyond past limits you may have set for yourself. Viewer Discretion is ADVISED!!

Harry T. Yung With nothing operatic about it (not even in the context of "soap opera"), this movie is better depicted in its Chinese title "New Branded To Kill", as it is sort of a remake or sequel of director SUZUKI Seijun's acclaimed cult classic "Branded To Kill" (1967), a female version of the original.The plot, if it can be called that, is suited even better to a video game. 35-year-old (at the time the movie was made) ESUMI Makiko, whom some called the "coolest Japanese actress", plays "Strayed cat", the no. 3 of the top ten assassins in the organization. The story, again if you can call it that, is not unlike what you see in a squash or tennis club ladder, where you are constantly after the ones above you and challenged by the ones below. Obviously, a set up such as this cannot go without the usual identity mystery.80-year-old director Suzuki shows that he hasn't lost his touch. Sometimes comic-strip-like, sometime surreal, sensual, stylised, colourful (literally), absurd, Pistol Opera is everything you would expect of a cult movie. And it doesn't even have CGI, relying just on what the camera can do. But in terms of the sheer elegance of pistol poses, this one has yet to measure up to director Johnny To's "The Mission" (1999). But then the comparison may not be fair as these two movies really belong to two different genres.One critic describes Pistol Opera as "like a dream David Lynch has after watching too many John Woo movies" - not totally accurate, but certainly creative