Review: Gantz and Gantz Perfect Answer

Dir. Shinsuke Sato (2010)

The following review contains minor spoilers.

Fans of the manga, you might be in the wrong place. I’m reviewing these two as films apart from any pre-existing media as I have no substantive experience with any other forms of the story so I am not in a position to compare them in depth. That said, I did flip through one of the manga books at a local shop and found it borderline pornographic, an immediate turn-off to me. Needless to say, I didn’t find enough redeeming qualities in the manga upon my quick appraisal to justify doing any detailed compare and contrast with the movie in this video. 

So that’s that, on with the review.

Here’s the basic premise, instead of going to an afterlife, a select few who die are resurrected by a mysterious black orb to fight aliens. Why? To what end? These mysteries drive the first movie, and new questions drive the second.

The Gantz movies are fascinating science fiction that tilts into horror or romance from time to time. Both movies present a central mystery and both provide somewhat satisfactory conclusions to all questions raised. However, they are not standalone, the first film sets the stage for the second to a high degree. Despite their connected nature, both movies have similar issues that keep, what I believe to be, decent movies from being amazing.

The overall story benefits greatly from its sense of mystery so I’ll keep silent on the details; just know that the narrative hook of the films is pretty cool and very unusual. That said, these are frustrating movies. For example, characters have many, MANY opportunities to shoot at, slice, or otherwise deal with threats but don’t, because they’re too busy posing for the camera. It may have you yelling in frustration at times. Simply because of the way the film is cut, it makes a lot of character deaths look entirely avoidable. Additionally, there are a ton of cliches baked into the script, cheesy farewell speeches, people yelling “NOOO” and hitting the ground...it can get pretty hackneyed. The second movie adds to this bloat by introducing a new central character who has a plot-line separate from the main story. This would be fine if they had some impact on the overall plot, but they never really do...you could cut all their scenes and the movie would largely play out the same.

An additional thing to be aware of is just how gruesome and violent these movies are. Notes of Men in Black and the cool, sleek look of the sci-fi elements may give some viewers the impression that this is a relatively tame affair. That is not the case, at all. The first movie in particular, also tends to be a little pervy; granted, there’s no visible nudity or anything ultra-tawdry, just enough lingering camera angles and suggestive material to make some ladies watching feel potentially unwelcome. But then, based on what I saw upon my flip-through of the manga, this is pretty restrained I guess.

The acting is also hit and miss, but there’s nothing truly terrible on display in that regard. None of these issues are massive in scale, yet they come off as tragic since the movies really could have been perfected in editing. There’s a lot to like about them, which is partly what makes the problems so frustrating. Noted issues aside, the action sequences are inventive, unique, and pretty thrilling! You’ll never be entirely sure which direction the sequence is heading in and seeing each new alien in action is awesome! The visual effects look generally great, a blend of serviceable practical fx and some awesome computer vfx as well! 

We never really get to know most the characters very well, but what we do learn about our leads goes a long way towards giving them both depth and agency in the proceedings. Overall, problematic yet really fun...for the right audience that is.

So should you see the Gantz movies?

If you’re up for some long, action-packed science-fiction horror that is inventive, mysterious, ultra-gory, and exciting, you should absolutely check out the Gantz movies. Once again though, unless you are willing to jump into some editing software and make your own cut of these films, the series will probably annoy you on some level. Just sayin’.

-Josh Evans