![]() Sawa (India Eisley) seducing her way to her target Jackson – continue to speak with American accents. The city where the story takes place is never specified but despite this most of the supporting cast members all speak with noticeable South African accents, even local slang, which becomes a little incongruous when the leads – India Eisley and Samuel L. ![]() The other oddity is that the film has been shot in South Africa – no particular problem with that as the country has become a popular destination for low-cost shooting in recent years. There is even the expected whitewashing – the characters all retain their Japanese names but have been cast with Western faces (there is not a single Asian actor to be spotted anywhere in the film). ![]() In terms of adapting the anime, the film has done little more than take the basic concept and watered it down to an anodyne action movie. Expectedly, the US version has cut out all of the sexual content – at most, we now have Sawa outfitted in a series of scanty outfits and using her sex appeal to get close to the gang members. In this case, Sawa has been cast with someone who maximises the lithe and sexy image while also looking about as close to being legal as it was possible to get away with. What we essentially have here is The Punisher but played by a barely adolescent girl. Sawa is one of those heroines that you suspect fuels more the creator’s sexual fetishes that it does any desire to create an empowered kickass heroine – see other examples like the heroines in Blood: The Last Vampire (2000) or Kick-Ass (2010). Surprisingly, it took the Japanese several years to get into the act themselves with live-action remakes of Casshern (2004), Cutie Honey (2004), Devilman (2004), YatterMan (2009), Space Battleship Yamato (2010), Kiki’s Delivery Service (2014), Lupin III (2014), Attack on Titan (2015), Fullmetal Alchemist (2017), Gintama (2017) and Tokyo Ghoul (2017), which are far superior to the Western equivalents. The genre was begun several years earlier with the usually low-budget likes of The Guyver (1991), Crying Freeman (1995) and Fist of the North Star (1995) and subsequent to this Ghost in the Shell (2017) and Cowboy Bebop (2021), while there have been plans for a live-action version of Akira (1988) for more than a decade now. Kite now joins a host of other Western films that have adapted anime in live-action, including the likes of Transformers (2007) and sequels, Speed Racer (2008), Blood: The Last Vampire (2009), Dragonball: Evolution (2009) and Ghost in the Shell (2017). Yasuomi Umetsu later solo directed a 60-minuute sequel with Kite Liberator (2007) where the sex content was considerably toned down. ![]() In these, she is portrayed as barely adolescent if not underage, which caused upset to many censors. It is these latter that are the cause of most of the cuts – in particular, multiple scenes that show Sawa being raped and/or having sex with most of the characters, including Aker. The crucial difference however is that the anime comes with a high level of stylised violence and copious sex scenes. In many countries, this was heavily cut – the US version runs to only 45 minutes, removing around a quarter of the film’s running time.Īside from a few character changes, both the live-action film and the anime have essential similarities on a basic plotting level – a young girl is directed to act as an assassin on behalf of a detective. The original was first released as two OVA shorts and then compiled together as a single film that runs to 60 minutes. Jackson ( Oldboy, Django Unchained) keeping things grounded.Kite is a live-action English-language film based on the anime Kite (1998), which was written and co-directed by Yasuomi Umetsu. I’m thinking this could be a nice little bit of high adrenaline distraction with the always interesting presence of Samuel L. With a replacement director wrapping things up Kite will get a chance to soar sometime in 2014 but fans are doubtful the overall impact of the original (which was heavy with the kind of sex and violence that would be next to impossible to secure in live-action format) can be matched no matter how flashy and amped up this first preview looks like the remake will be. Ellis) sadly passed away during filming in South Africa. Then when there was a green light to move forward the original director (David R. Originally planned for 2008, the film lost some air when production details couldn’t be locked down. Thoughts: Adapted from the popular 1998 Japanese anime, the US version of Kite has been through some less than breezy days in its way to the big screen. Synopsis: When her cop father is killed, a young woman tracks the murder with the apparent help of his ex-partner.
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