Dead Leaves Review

Available now on DVD, Dead Leaves is a product of Manga Video (yeah, the guys that brought us Ghost in the Shell and Ninja Scroll). I'm no super anime guy but I'm pretty sure Manga Video is just the U.S. publisher (think 20th Century Fox or Universal) as opposed to an animation house (think Disney, Pixar, or Dreamworks).Not that any of that information has any bearing on this review!

Dead Leaves is the name of a prison complex on the shattered moon. I only know that because the official site mentions it somewhere. There's more to it than that... it's a research lab and cloning facility as well. This adventure begins with our main characters facing each other, naked, in a barren field next to a generic city.

Ubiquitous spoiler warning: There's not much to give away but if you want to be totally surprised, don't read any more.

Action - That's what it's all about

Scene to scene to scene, Dead Leaves serves up a buffet of sytlized, cartoonish, ultra violence. Endless hordes of faceless (and quazi-faceless) minions slaughter each other in hail after hail of swooshing bullets. Everything is in constant motion (although there are several stills with emphasized moving text) and you could count the few still moments if you care to but those are probably the best parts to turn to your neighbor and say, "Jeez, this is nuts" so you'll probably miss them anyway.

If that's all you need in a movie, read no more. This film is a beautiful way to spend your time and money.

Blood spews from anything containing it. Gore looks like blood and body parts and they fly at every turn. Shells, fists, and anything else you'd expect in an animated death-fest appear and disappear (only to reappear, there are lots of "crazy carnage" shots that recycle bits with random gunk thrown in) quicker than the flimsy plot. Which reminds me...

Plot - There really is one... sort-of

Since you might not get it from watching the film, I'm not really spoiling anything by telling you that there is a story here. It's not deep and doesn't pretend to be. Many would say, "Not everything needs a plot" but to them I'd say, "Think of how much better all that action would have been if it had actually done something."

There's a nice collection of subplots accompanying the main one. Ratchet your imagination back to grade school and they're great ones. You've got a quest for forgotten identities in the persons of Retro and Pandy. There's the excitement of a jail break and amazing chases and escapes which follow. The bad-asses in charge get their climactic final battle (with predictable results) which destroy lots and lots of things. Oh, and some kind of gigantic, incredibly unplanned oops goes nuts for the real ending. All of it's tied to (you guessed it) a diabolical conspiracy!

Yup, it's a standard action film. I think Sylvester Stallone should have starred as Retro with Angelina Jolie as Pandy. Mmmmm Angelina Jolie with white body paint.

Characters - Classic pyramid scheme

Unfortunately, there is no depth here or anything really interesting to talk about. That, in and of itself, makes it worthy of talking about. Here we have your classic pyramid of characters on both sides. If I were in the mood, I'd represent it graphically but I think a little table should illustrate it just as well.

Pandy is a super-unstoppable, smart-mouthed, dry-witted heroine. You know from the moment you see her that she's the real power among the anti-heroes. Retro is her TV-headed sidekick with a gigantic ego. Cross Eric Cartman (of South Park fame) with any super-ninja hero you've ever seen and an extra dose of 8-year-old maturity and you're getting close.

Chinko Drill is chief suck-up to Retro and his drill-for-a-penis is a running gag. Sarge shows up for a few frames and is, well, like a drill sergeant. Along with them go the bottomless bag of inmates.

The warden is a super-unstoppable, arrogant, humorless villain. You know from the moment you see her that she's going to have an epic confrontation with Pandy. 666 and 777 are her chief henchmen with gigantic egos. Think Vegeta and Nappa of Dragonball Z (Saiyan Saga) and you're getting close.

Killer robots and nondescript cops guard the prison (and Earth, but that's a minor part of their involvement). Citizens are equally faceless and don't really have any part aside from being there.

Conclusion - Animated fragfest

This movie makes really good background noise. In fact, I've had it running behind this window as I've been typing this review. The music is nice and the animation has a cute anime/video game style to it. I couldn't label it exciting (since, at no point, did I feel any danger... and the parade of violence dulls your senses to any possible shock within the first 10 minutes) but I think it's fair to call it a fun romp through a (very angry and disturbed) kid's adolescent dreams. Not something to my taste but, obviously, there's a lot of love for this sort of thing out there.

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Note: all images captured from Dead Leaves DVD.