Dragon Head

Genre: Drama/ Sci-fi
Starring:
# Satoshi Tsumabuki as Teru Aoki
# Sayaka as Ako Seto
# Takayuki Yamada as Nobuo Takahashi
# Yoshimasa Kondo as Iwata
# Kyusaku Shimada as Minila
Release year: 2003
Language: Japanese
Subtitle: English (hardsub)

SYNOPSIS:
Mochizuki's Dragon Head manga series was featured in Weekly Young Magazine from September 1994 to December 1999. The story is an intense mystery about Teru Aoki (Tsumabuki) who is returning home on the bullet train from a class trip with his teacher and classmates. While the train is passing through a tunnel, the train runs off the tracks and crashes. Everyone aboard the train except Teru seems to have died in the accident.

However, while Teru stumbles around through the darkness and the rubble, one of his female classmates, Ako Seto (SAYAKA) grabs his ankle. Apparently she is one of the rare survivors of the crash. When they finally escape the dark and deadly tunnel, they discover a world of mass destruction. Unaware of what happened or the cause of the destruction, they must struggle to survive in an unforgiving enviroment, which resembles an apocalyptic Tokyo.

RATING: ?/10
USER RATING:

REVIEW:
" George Iida’s “Dragon Head” opens with high school student
Teru (Satoshi Tsumabuki) waking up inside a bullet train. Teru is the sole survivor of a terrible train accident, and all of his classmates are dead. If that wasn’t bad enough, the tunnel they were going through has collapsed, leaving Teru trapped. Teru quickly locates two other survivors in the adjacent car — Nubuo and Ako (Sayaka Kanda). Unfortunately Nubuo has lost his faculties and before you can say, “Oh Dear, it looks a lot like ‘Lord of the Flies’”, Nubuo has painted his face with lipstick and has fashioned himself a spear.

Eventually Teru and Ako, sans Nubuo, manages to crawl their way out of the tunnel using a drainage system. What they discover outside is even worst — the world has been reduced to ash, and civilization has fallen to a disaster of world-shattering proportions. The duo does their best to survive, trekking back toward Tokyo, their hometown, while encountering a sea of destruction and a host of wacky and dangerous characters along the way.

One thing that annoys about “Dragon Head” is its insistence that high school teens are incapable of acting with some modicum of competence in the aftermath of a disaster. The hero spends the first 10 minutes of the movie literally falling down. Nobuo turns psychotic and beats his injured teacher to death, then proceeds to stomp on the dead bodies of the students that used to bully him. Ako has the mentality of a 5-year old — that is, she is completely useless. Granted, they’ve just been through a horrible tragedy, but does it really make sense that 16 or 17-year olds would completely de-evolve into such sad states?

With a two hour running time to play with, co-writer/director George Iida (”Another Heaven”) elects to spend the first 40 minutes on the struggle between semi-intelligent Teru, psycho Nubuo, and hapless Ako inside the tunnel. The first 20 minutes of this seems necessary, as it helps to establish the hopelessness of the situation, but the next 20 minutes seems to drag, keeping the movie away from its real story — that is, the survival on the world outside. In any case, Nubuo is simply not realized enough, and his transformation from bullied nerd to killer isn’t very convincing.

By the time Ako and Teru makes it to the outside world, things look up for the movie — although not for our leads. The whole thing takes on a surreal vibe, as the two encounters a series of survivors more baffling and dangerous that the previous. In one town, they almost lose their heads to a group of survivors who have collectively decided to pretend the disaster never happened. They also meet two soldiers, one of whom quickly develops an eye for Ako. Which leads me to this conclusion: Has there ever been an End of the World movie where soldiers didn’t prove to be sadistic and insane?

Like most Japanese movies, you can expect some measure of kookiness involved, and “Dragon Head” is no exception. As it were, the Japanese are very peculiar about injecting oddball moments into their movies, such as the presence of two boys whose father has surgically removed the part of their brain that feels fear. There’s the odious villain who giggles or cackles a lot because, well, that’s his archetype. Lead Teru has that ineffectual quality that prevents him from achieving true hero status. Also, Ako wears her schoolgirl uniform throughout the entire movie for some odd reason. You would think a short skirt and pumps wouldn’t be very useful during, you know, a trek through an apocalyptic landscape.

The thing about “Dragon Head’s” two leads is that they’re nitwits, and their astonishing continued survival is due more to blind luck. I’ve never encountered two people with less survival instincts than these two, although the survivors of “28 Days Later” do come close. Teru breaks down in tears at any given opportunity, and Ako is, well, pretty much useless throughout. Their survival is not only left to chance, but rather to Movie Chance — i.e. they survive each subsequent bizarre circumstance because the movie needs them to. In the real world, these two dummies would never have made it out of the tunnel.

In any case, “Dragon Head” has enough merits to recommend viewing. The sea of carnage in the aftermath of the disaster is impressive, with giant hulks of cities and whole towns reduced to skeletal ashes of their former selves. Iida, no stranger to special effects, gives “Dragon Head” enough visual flair to make it a worthwhile endeavor. While the special effects are nothing new (American Meteorites Attack movies have been doing this for a while now) the ambitious apocalyptic landscape achieved here is certainly something to behold, especially since most of it is actual destruction. "

Source: BeyongHollywood

PREVIEW:

RELATED LINKS:
MU: 01 - 02 - 03 - 04 - 05 - 06 - 07 - 08 - 09

IF YOU LIKE THIS MOVIE, PLEASE BUY THE ORIGINAL DVD HERE!!!


========================================

NOW IT'S YOUR TURN TO SHOW ME YOUR LOVE! BUY ME A DRINK or CHICKEN WINGS. I'm so thirsty and hungry after uploading the movies for you. o(^_^)o
(NOTE: Besides Paypal, the restaurant accepts all major credit cards)

THANK YOU SO MUCH!

========================================

NOTE:
[*] TO JOIN FILES END WITH .001 .002 .003 ... USE FILEFJ. DOWNLOAD HERE
[*] TO OPEN FILES END WITH .RAR, USE WINRAR DOWNLOAD HERE
[*] TO PLAY VARIOUS VIDEO FORMAT SUCH AS AVI, MP4, WMV... AND BE ABLE TO WATCH IT WITH SUBTITLE, INSTAL K-LITE CODEC PACK DOWNLOAD HERE
[*] TO PLAY FILES END WITH RMVB, RM, INSTALL REAL MEDIA PLAYER OR REAL ALTERNATIVE DOWNLOAD HERE
[*] MORE USEFUL INFOMATION AT FAQ/SUPPORT



If you enjoy this movie, leave some comments. Your comments are valuable to me and keep me doing my job well.