Alive is about some dingle berry who is a calming psychopath being utilized in a government experiment pertaining to some mystical thingy. Nice settings and some good action sequences but the story goes nowhere and the pacing is like slugs screwing. If this movie was at least 25 minutes shorter I would of liked it more because this dicking about with idle dialogue and meaningless progression was poofy. It's only worth one assimilation in its entirety at best.

I've seen most of Ryuhei Kitamura's work and I've come to the conclusion that he has a knack for action. Scenes are kinetic and fast often combining elements of martial arts, gun fights and samurai fights with camera work that effectively captures the on screen carnage. With "Versus" and "Aragami" Kitamura demonstrated that creativity and showed that he his more than capable of working with a low budget. So what happened in "Alive" ? To be more blunt, the answer would be - nothing. Nothing happened in "Alive" it was a two hours plus movie with little to no action and little to no characters and plot.Adapted from a comic book by Tsutomu Takahashi "Alive" is an examination of the life of one Tenshu Yashiro (played by Hideo Sasaki) a death row convict who survives his execution. He is then given a choice of either to repeat the execution or to subject himself in a bizarre series of experiments. He chooses the latter and soon after that is placed in a room along with a rapist and later with a girl infected with a strange parasite that in exchange for it's host's humanity grants supernatural powers. Naturaly at some point that parasite moves into Yashiro, the bad thing is that doesn't happen very soon. Similar to "Aragami", "Alive" sets it's first half in establishing the basic exposition. Characters are introduced, their motivations are set and their relations between each other are uncovered. The whole thing even takes place in just one set. The first major problem of that comparison is that while "Aragami" was just a 70 minute movie, "Alive" drags on for more than two hours thus making the first part over one hour long. That length could have been justified had the characters been made a bit more interesting but alas that is not the case. Dialogue is dry, monotonous, delivered without any sense of emotion or depth, characters themselves aren't much interesting. There were some small attempts at making "Alive" a bit more moral ambiguous but in the end it all came down to the classic : evil government people against, super-powered protagonist, whom yes you guessed it, saves the girl in the end. Like I previously said the entire film practically takes place at just one set, and after two hours that does get boring, even worse the set design itself wasn't even interesting to begin with, and doesn't do much to improve on other aspects of the film.Now, after that first part is over, one might think that Kitamura would at least make some entertaining action scenes to make up for the boring beginning. Sadly that is not the case. The two only fights are actually rehashes of similar fights from Hollywood movies, complete with bullet time effects and psychic powers. They're just not interesting or fun, Kitamura's creativity from "Versus" is gone, the small set even limits his often very impressive camera-work and it all boils down into generic and expectable fights, a shame really.Evidently "Aragami" was better on all accounts and "Kitamura" had learned something from "Alive". So it wasn't at least a total loss watching this movie. If only to understand the errors made, how to fix them and create a better more entertaining movie.

Out of all the Kitamura movies I've seen, this is my least favorite. I liked it but its not his best in my opinion. Hideo Sakaki was of course good, but other than that the cast didn't push me either way. They were just there. I say it is misleading about the whole Cube reference because it was nothing like that movie, except if you take into account that they're in a cell. But it wasn't claustrophobic at all. ******THIS IS WHERE IT MIGHT GET SPOILERY!!!!******** As far as the Sakaki/Sakaguchi reunion went I was a little disappointed. I knew Tak would come in at the last part and I knew they would have an ending fight-scene, but I was looking forward to that. Heh, I was even looking forward to the cheesy make-up/body suit that he would have on; which I enjoyed btw. But what disappointed me was that there was no bantering. Tak uttered not a word and that took some of the luster away from the fight/reunion. Also, I felt robbed that Hideo wasn't the one to give him the death blow. What's worse is that he died from a gun shot wound! No! Ah, what a waste. I didn't find it terribly perplexing, like some of Kitamura's other works, but there's one thing that kept rolling around in my head: was Zeros an alien? I don't think he was. I think that the alien part of the story was the virus itself, but Zeros was a human previously who caught the disease and the results were what we saw, he was changed extensively and was absent of any kind of personality and that's what Tenshu would have become eventually. *********END OF SPOILERS***************It was an alright flick, I wouldn't pay the list price for it but it was good. Perhaps even good enough to own, watch with a buddy or two and perhaps even play Mystery Science Theatre.

The movie is based on a manga series created by Tutomu Takahashi and as usual in such cases 'the book was better'. I haven't enjoyed the movie at all, despite its unusual atmosphere, it is just too long. A good film consists of many elements and one of them is right pace, which this film is lacking. What struck me the most was decreasing quality of the special effects, as if they spent most of the money in the beginning and then tried to do the ending with whatever was left. Ah I forgot to mention the 'mutant from space' character, which was omitted in the comic book, that gave the final scenes a 'Dragon Ball' feel and only distorted the depth of the comic ending.