Limerculer A waste of 90 minutes of my life

Cooktopi The acting in this movie is really good.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Candida It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

lewiskendell Versus aims to be a stylish, cool action flick with a healthy mixture of gore, gun-play, and martial arts. Unfortunately, a lot of those attempts at being stylish and cool, end up coming off as cheesy. All the silly posing and failed attempts at humor don't do a lot to help Versus, and neither does the fact that the characters are almost universally annoying and uninteresting. The story is something about zombies and resurrection forests and portals to hell. The word "convoluted" comes to mind. The frequent action scenes could have been the movie's saving grace, but they were uniformly uninspired and routine. The gore wasn't funny or copious enough to warrant any attention. The acting is bad. Not "campy bad" or "hilariously bad", just bad. The kind that's difficult to watch.If you couldn't tell, I thoroughly disliked Versus. I've seen a lot of great Japanese action flicks. This wasn't one of them.

MBunge If Sam Raimi and gotten drunk when he was 17 and made a movie about Japanese gangsters and zombies, it would have looked a lot like Versus.A couple of escapes from a Japanese prison with "lawbreaker" in English on the front of their prison jumpsuits meet up with a group of Yakuza gangsters in the middle of the forest. T he gangsters are there to pick up the prisoners and help them escape, but insist they wait for another man to arrive. T he prisoners don't care for that, especially one who looks like the boy band version of a badass. Boy Band Badass especially doesn't like it when he finds out the Yakuza have brought a kidnapped girl along with them. They man they're waiting for has plans for her as well, but Boy Band Badass grabs one of the gangsters' guns and demands they let her go. One of the gangsters gets shot dead…and then he comes back to life as a zombie. As Boy Band Badass and the girl flee and the Yakuza pursue, we learn this forest is where the gang has been burying their victims…and they've all come back to life as zombies as well. What follows that is some really crazy stuff as Boy Band Badass fights the Yakuza and they all fight the zombies. Then the man they were all waiting for shows up and we find out this is all some re-enactment of an ancient battle for a dark power of destruction, only this is in modern times and everyone looks like they stepped out of a music video.There is an awful lot of this movie that is laugh out loud goofy. It is never boring, however, and these Japanese filmmakers do know how to film a fight scene. You can actually see what's happening and follow along, rather than the indecipherable blur of jump cuts and microsecond edits that mar most action scenes in American movies. But you can't take anything else in this film at all seriously.If you're high on some illegal or illicit mind-altering substance, you might have a nice trip watching Versus because it's very visually creative. If you'd like something you can bring home and MST3K with your family and friends, Versus might be a nice choice as well. But if you're neither stoned nor snarky, there's not much here to recommend.

kountxero 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!

LoneWolfAndCub Ryuhei Kitamura has created a cult classic that this viewer (and probably many others) will never forget. Not only was this one of the most enjoyable movie experiences I've ever had, it was actually a good movie as well. For the record, I usually hate action movies and try to stay away from them. When an action movie is a success it is usually an outstanding movie ("Die Hard", "Indiana Jones" and "The Terminator") but when they are bad they are abysmal. "Versus" falls into the former category and for me, is probably one of the best action movies ever made. Not only does it also blend horror, comedy and fantasy extremely well, it disregards story and logic for some awesome fighting scenes which is what an action movie is all about.....action! For what little story there is: the 444th (out 666) gate to hell is located in Japan, more precisely the "Forest of Resurrection." Two escaped prisoners meet a gang to escape but when it all goes wrong and one of the two prisoners ends up dead, it's up to Prisoner KSC2-303 to fulfill his destiny and fight "The Man." Really, there isn't much of a plot to tell. My summary is very vague for a reason, watching this movie for the first time not knowing much is better. What the plot is really there for is to stage many fights involving guns, knives, fists, samurai swords, shotguns, bloody stumps and a sniper rifle. These fights are choreographed very well and feature some outstanding gore effects. On the topic of gore, this movie is full of it, probably one of the goriest movies I've ever seen and will please fans of splatter movies. Zombies are even included and since I love a good zombie movie this was also a treat for me.As the movie progresses it gets more ludicrous and fun. Many bits had me laughing out loud and others just amazed at the fight scenes which are truly amazing. "Versus" is much like Peter Jackson and Sam Raimi's early works, movies like "Braindead", "Bad Taste", "The Evil Dead" and "Evil Dead 2" will no doubt enjoy every moment of this movie. If there is a sequel in the works, this reviewer is extremely excited.5/5