As I said in my previous post, when I finally got to see this film in its entirety, it was at a large format, 3-D screening. Having seen the first chunk of the film in 2-D, I was able to see the difference the third dimension had on the film. It wasn't the best 3-D I've ever seen. I would have appreciated a little more depth in some places, but there were a couple times when, looking down, the 3-D created the illusion of great height very well. One shot fairly early on even got my stomach to drop slightly. The 3-D was also used very well in some of the naval battles and, of course, served to highlight the over the top visual style of the film, making blood appear to splash in all directions.
That visual style is by definition, stylistic, and clearly has its own voice. It looks cool on screen and does its job, but it may be a rare case where something that is "stylistic" is not "artistic". This is not a serious criticism, just something I picked up on. I got the sense that the stylized action and violence in the film was there solely for the purpose of looking cool. Often when a film has such stylized violent visuals, there is something beautifully artistic about those visuals as well (I'm thinking of the Crazy 88 fight scene in "Kill Bill"), but I don't feel that was the case here. This mimics my overall impression of the film as a whole. I don't think it is technically a very good film, but it was still entertaining.
I never became fully invested in this film. In fact, it all seemed kind of pointless to me. It had an aimless storyline that seemed to be building toward something that it never reached. At a little over two hours, the film's entire runtime feels like a prologue, followed by a strange dream/flashforward that functions as an epilogue.
The film takes place in Japan before World War II, and there are references made to Hitler and the possible coming conflict, but nothing ever materializes from this. It instead deals with the main character's life and personal problems over the span of several years, but its not presented in a way grand enough to feel that it justified a cinematic portrayal.
I also was not a fan of some of the English dubbing. Many of the roles are done by reasonably well known actors. Some acquit themselves well, but others seem to be phoning it in, as if they did their dialogue recording in the same session as some television commercial voiceover work. It's possible that I would enjoy the film more if I saw it a second time, knowing what to expect, but I have no interest.
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