''Blood: The Last Vampire'', released in Japan as , is a 2009

vampire A vampire is a mythical creature that subsists by feeding on the Vitalism, vital essence (generally in the form of blood) of the living. In European folklore, vampires are undead, undead creatures that often visited loved ones and caused mi ...

action film Action film is a film genre in which the protagonist is thrust into a series of events that typically involve violence and physical feats. The genre tends to feature a mostly resourceful hero struggling against incredible odds, which include life ...

directed by

Chris Nahon Chris Nahon is a French film director best known for directing the films ''Kiss of the Dragon ''Kiss of the Dragon'' (''Le Baiser mortel du dragon'' in French) is a 2001 French-American action film directed by Chris Nahon, written and produ ...

, written by Chris Chow, produced by

Ronny Yu Ronny is a given name, sometimes a short form (hypocorism) of Ryan. It may refer to: * Ronny (footballer, born 1986), Brazilian footballer Ronny Heberson Furtado de Araújo * Ronny (footballer, born 1991), Brazilian footballer Ronieri da Silva Pi ...

, and stars Jun Ji-Hyun,

Allison Miller Allison Miller is an American actress. She is best known for playing Michelle Benjamin on the NBC series '' Kings'', Skye Tate on the Fox series '' Terra Nova'', and Carrie on the NBC series ''Go On''. She starred as Laura Larson on the Syfy tel ...

, Liam Cunningham,

Masiela Lusha Masiela Lusha (; born October 23, 1985) is an Albanian-born American actress and author. She gained recognition for playing Carmen Lopez on the globally syndicated ABC sitcom ''George Lopez'', a role that earned her two consecutive Young Artist ...

, and

Koyuki , better known by her stage name , is a Japanese model and actress. She rose to fame in the drama '' Kimi wa Petto'' with Jun Matsumoto and gained huge popularity, as well as the hit film ''The Last Samurai''. Career Actor career Koyuki appeared ...

. An international co-production of France, Hong Kong, China, Japan and the United States, the film is a live-action adaptation of the anime film of the same name created and produced by studio

Production I.G is a Japanese animation studio and production enterprise, founded on December 15, 1987, by Mitsuhisa Ishikawa and headquartered in Musashino, Tokyo, Japan. The letters I and G derive from the names of the company founders: producer Mitsuhisa Ish ...

. Like its source material, the film focuses on a half-human, half-vampire girl named Saya (Ji-hyun) who hunts full-blooded vampires in partnership with humans and seeks to destroy Onigen, the most powerful of vampires. The film was released in Japan and other Asian markets on 29 May 2009. It was released in the United Kingdom on 26 June 2009 and saw a limited release to theatres in the United States starting on 10 July 2009. It received unfavorable reviews, being negatively compared to its source material.

Plot

In 1970s

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

, Saya is a 400-year-old half human-half vampire who hunts vampires. Raised by a man named Kato, she works loosely with an organisation known as "The Council", a secret society that has been hunting vampires for centuries. Saya's motivation goes beyond duty; she wants revenge: Onigen, the oldest of the vampires, murdered her father. For her next mission, she goes undercover as a student at Kanto High School on an American air base near Fussa. When she is introduced in her class, Saya's appearance quickly attracts the negative attention of a female classmate, Sharon. The daughter of the base's general, Alice McKee, is also bothered with the attention. At her school, she finds herself being mocked. Alice is asked by her

Kendo is a modern Japanese martial art, descended from kenjutsu (one of the old Japanese martial arts, swordsmanship), that uses bamboo swords (shinai) as well as protective armor (bōgu). Today, it is widely practiced within Japan and has spread ...

instructor Powell to stay for the Kendo practice due to her poor performance. As soon as the teacher leaves, she finds herself at the mercy of Sharon and her sidekick friend who wield sharp bladed

katana A is a Japanese sword characterized by a curved, single-edged blade with a circular or squared guard and long grip to accommodate two hands. Developed later than the ''tachi'', it was used by samurai in feudal Japan and worn with the edge fa ...

s to

taunt A taunt is a battle cry, sarcastic remark, gesture, or insult intended to demoralize the recipient, or to anger them and encourage reactionary behaviors without thinking. Taunting can exist as a form of social competition to gain control of the tar ...

and

torment Torment may refer to: * The feeling of pain or suffering * Causing to suffer, torture Films * ''Torment'' (1924 film), a silent crime-drama * ''Torment'' (1944 film) (''Hets''), a Swedish film * ''Torment'' (1950 British film), a British thr ...

her. Saya shows up just in time to stop Sharon from slashing Alice's throat. Despite Saya's effort to disguise her activity, Alice sees Sharon and her friend being butchered. However it is soon revealed that Sharon and her friend are vampires in disguise. Because "The Council" cleans up the bodies of the

demons A demon is a malevolent supernatural entity. Historically, belief in demons, or stories about demons, occurs in religion, occultism, literature, fiction, mythology, and folklore; as well as in media such as comics, video games, movies, anime, ...

, Alice's father does not believe her story. Determined to make her own investigation, Alice goes to the bar where her Kendo instructor usually hangs out. To her horror her instructor, as well as the rest of the people in the bar, turn out to be vampires. Once again Saya comes to her rescue and has to fight off hordes of vampires surrounding them. General McKee investigates "The Council", who disguise themselves as

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...

. Alice arrives just in time to witness her father's death. Her dying father gives her Saya's address. With nowhere else to go, Alice decides to seek Saya's help. Fortunately Saya has never sworn loyalty to "The Council" and protects Alice instead. The two of them flee the area and go off to the mountains to find and slay Onigen. In their pursuit, Alice and Saya are run off the side of the road by an attacking demon and they fall into a ravine. When Alice and Saya awaken they are in

Ancient Japan The first human inhabitants of the Japanese archipelago have been traced to prehistoric times around 30,000 BC. The Jōmon period, named after its cord-marked pottery, was followed by the Yayoi period in the first millennium BC when new invent ...

where Saya was raised. Onigen appears, reveals her true identity as Saya's mother, and fights Saya. Saya slays Onigen. Alice, who is injured during the fighting, wakes up to find herself at the wreckage of the truck and being carried into an

ambulance An ambulance is a medically equipped vehicle which transports patients to treatment facilities, such as hospitals. Typically, out-of-hospital medical care is provided to the patient during the transport. Ambulances are used to respond to medi ...

. Later she is interviewed about the events surrounding her father's death, but her interviewer does not believe her story about the vampires or the Council. When asked about where Saya is, Alice answers that she is "searching for a way back from the other side of the

looking glass A mirror or looking glass is an object that Reflection (physics), reflects an image. Light that bounces off a mirror will show an image of whatever is in front of it, when focused through the lens of the eye or a camera. Mirrors reverse the ...

Cast

* Jun Ji-hyun as Saya Otonashi (credited as Gianna Jun) *

as Alice McKee *

as Sharon * JJ Feild as Luke *

as Onigen *

Yasuaki Kurata is a Japanese martial artist and actor, best known for his work in Hong Kong action films. He holds dan ranks in Karate (7th degree), Judo (3rd degree), and Aikido (2nd degree). Biography Kurata was born and raised in Sakura-mura, Niihari Dis ...

as Kato Takatora * Larry Lamb as General McKee *

Andrew Pleavin Andrew Pleavin (born 13 April 1968) is an English actor known for his appearances in the TV film ''Attila'', ''Unstoppable'', ''Batman Begins'', '' Attack of the Gryphon'', ''Return to House on Haunted Hill'' and his roles in the British police ...

as Frank Nielsen * Michael Byrne as Elder * Colin Salmon as Powell * Liam Cunningham as Michael Harrison * Ailish OConnor as Linda * Constantine Gregory as Mr. Henry * Joey Anaya as Creature * Khary Payton as Creature

Production

In May 2006,

Bill Kong William Kong sometimes credited as Bill Kong () (born 1953) is a film producer known for his active role in the Hong Kong film industry and International co-production. He is most famous for co-producing the Wuxia film ''Crouching Tiger, Hidden D ...

announced that he was producing a live-action film adaptation of ''Blood: The Last Vampire,'' directed by

. Like the source anime, it would be primarily filmed in English rather than Japanese. Kong and Yu originally planned to finance the project themselves, but in November 2006,

officially consented to the film and began offering financial support. Rather than being paid a straight license, Production I.G will receive a percentage of all revenues generated by the film. Through ties to Manga Entertainment, the French company

Pathé Pathé or Pathé Frères (, styled as PATHÉ!) is the name of various French people, French businesses that were founded and originally run by the Pathé Brothers of France starting in 1896. In the early 1900s, Pathé became the world's largest ...

became the film's co-production company, joining the Hong Kong-based Edko. Yu was retained as its producer, but

took over as the film's director. South Korean actress Jun Ji-hyun, who adopted the English screen name Gianna Jun for the release, plays the role of Saya. In early announcements, it was stated that the film would be set in 1948 at a United States Army camp in Tokyo, shortly after the conclusion of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

during the

American occupation of Japan Japan was occupied and administered by the victorious Allies of World War II from the 1945 surrender of the Empire of Japan at the end of the war until the Treaty of San Francisco took effect in 1952. The occupation, led by the United States wi ...

. During production, the film was shifted to be set in the 1970s instead (the original setting for the anime).

Release

Originally slated to be released worldwide in spring 2008, the film premiered in Japan on 29 May 2009, and was released in the United Kingdom on 26 June 2009.

Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions Group Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions (SPWA) is a specialty film division of Sony Pictures. The company specializes in acquiring and producing films for a wide variety of distribution platforms. History The group became a stand-alone division of ...

licensed the film for release in North America, where it was released to theatres by Samuel Goldwyn Films on 10 July 2009.

Box office

The film grossed US$473,992 in Japan, and had a worldwide gross of US$5,731,143. On the opening weekend of its limited release to twenty theatres in the United States, the film grossed $103,000.

Reception

Cathy Rose A. Garcia of ''

The Korea Times ''The Korea Times'' is the oldest of three English-language newspapers published daily in South Korea. It is a sister paper of the ''Hankook Ilbo'', a major Korean language daily; both are owned by Dongwha Enterprise, a wood-based manufacturer ...

'' regarded Jun as being "probably the only bright spot in this film", criticising the "convoluted plot... cheesy special effects and overacting from the supporting cast". She dismissed much of the film's violence as "gratuitous" and noted that although the stunts were "impressive" they also lacked originality, while the climactic showdown showed an absence of "any real excitement". The film received negative reviews from American critics. On

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, the film holds an approval rating of 25%, based on 53 reviews, with an average rating of 3.73/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Based on a classic anime series, ''Blood: The Last Vampire'' is a tedious, shoddily acted, amateurish picture that loses all charm in the transition to live-action."

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

gave the film a score of 28 out of 100 based on 13 critical reviews, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". '' Variety''s Peter Debruge was critical of editor Marco Cave for "reducing all but one of the fight scenes into a flurry of cuts", and described the CG effects as "herky-jerky". Commenting on the direction, he said, "Nahon privileges surface appeal and kinetic energy over narrative logic, and finesses the footage with an unpleasant yellow tinge that gives everything a vintage chopsocky feel". Felix Vasquez, Jr. of ''Cinema Crazed'' praised the film as "blockbuster material", finding the film's special effects to be "top notch" and Nahon's direction as "often times beautiful as he convinces us successfully that we're watching a vampire period piece". Conversely, he felt the film lacked a real story, focusing mostly on sword-fights, and that the character of Alice was "dead weight" and a token character added to avoid the film being completely Asian. ''

The Hollywood Reporter ''The Hollywood Reporter'' (''THR'') is an American digital and print magazine which focuses on the Cinema of the United States, Hollywood film industry, film, television, and entertainment industries. It was founded in 1930 as a daily trade pap ...

''s Maggie Lee praised Jun's performance as Saya, feeling that she "displays ample aptitude for being an action heroine, doing most of her own tendon-twisting martial arts stunts and looking utterly fetching in a sailor suit that could turn any guy into a uniform-fetishist". However, she felt the direction and screenplay lacked "freshness" and "nuance", the special effects and choreography "cool" but unimpressive, and the ending predictable.

Roger Ebert Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...

rated the film three out of four stars, stating that it was "surprisingly entertaining" and a "CGI fantasy". He found the plot to be "inconsequential" to the action sequences. While he felt that Gianna was "never really convincing as a martial artist", he praised her for her "sympathetic performance" which he felt held the film together. As a whole, he found the movie to be "sincere as an entertainment" that "looks good" and is "atmospheric", and notes that he will be watching for Gianna in future films.

References

External links

*
Official website
at

Sony Pictures Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Sony Pictures or SPE, and formerly known as Columbia Pictures Entertainment, Inc.) is an American diversified multinational mass media and entertainment studio Conglomerate (company), conglom ...

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Blood: The Last Vampire 2009 films Anime film remakes Horror film remakes Films set in the 1970s Films set in Tokyo French vampire films Japanese vampire films American vampire films Martial arts horror films Blood: The Last Vampire Ninja films Pathé films Focus Features films Films scored by Clint Mansell English-language French films English-language Hong Kong films English-language Japanese films English-language Chinese films 2000s action horror films French action horror films Japanese action horror films French films about revenge American action horror films American films about revenge Live-action films based on animated series Live-action films based on manga Japan in non-Japanese culture Vampires in film Films directed by Chris Nahon Destination Films films Samuel Goldwyn Films films 2000s American films 2000s French films 2000s Chinese films 2000s Hong Kong films 2000s Japanese films ja:BLOOD THE LAST VAMPIRE#実写映画版