4/5 It is what it is - which is pretty good!
  by epb (Chicago, IL USA)
There seem to be two camps here - people that love the original anime and wanted a live action remake, and people new to the story who like the film for what it is. I've seen, but not loved, the original anime, and just discovered the film.

The movie is not the anime, but it is quite good in its own right. The action scenes are spectacular and the look of the film is moody and gorgeous with several beautiful images; seriously, you could pause the video at random and do a screen capture, and over 50% of the time you'd have a nice-looking wallpaper for your PC or decent poster. The action-packed battles are so good, they overcome the effects, which simply aren't up to portraying the demons in "true form" convincingly. Major props to the lead, who is charismatic, athletic, and battles with a casual, experienced flair that makes you feel her character really has been using a sword for hundreds of years.

The film has its off-notes: Alice's character is poorly written or heavily edited, so that much of what she says seems stupid or out of context. As in "The Legend of Chun-Li," Asia is crawling with Americans running things, instead of, you know, Asians, and not just on the military base. And the writer(s) would have done well to lead with the information in the cliched "big reveal." George Lucas and Mark Hamill have ruined such revelation scenes for at least a couple of generations.

But overall, if you're any sort of action movie/martial arts fan, your overwhelming reaction to this film will be a Keanu Reeves-like "whoa." I don't get the Japanese fascinations with school-girl outfits and swords, but this film makes them work.

5/5 MORE ACTION AND EXCITEMENT than the animated movie!!!
  by Francisco Cortes
For fans of the manga or anime versions this movie could make them a little dissapointed because Saya is not THAT quiet and tough looking. Besides, there are a few vampire monsters and more zombies and ninjas. I guess that makes the fans very angry.

BUT I DON'T CARE!!! ALL I CARE IS ABOUT THE ACTION! In this movie, Saya is a ONE-GIRL ARMY slashing lots of vampire-zombies and ninjas, the fight choreography is AWESOME! you'll see the "fast/slow motion" camera each time Saya kills an enemy, the cinematography is BEAUTIFUL as Crouching Tigger Hidden Dragon, the one to one fights were COOL, and the acting was okay.

I think that this is one of the few cool live-action animes ever! I mean... this one is good as Crying Freeman, Guyver 2 and Kill Bill vol. 1 because the action is more important than the concept but without trying to ruin it. No movie can be so specific as the series or comics but as long as the concept is still there then there is an opportunity to make the film very entertaining.

Adios.

3/5 A lot of fun despite being a bit of a mess and having poor CGI
  by Robert Moore (Chicago, IL USA)
I had a lot of fun watching this despite the film being plagued by a host of problems. For one thing, how can anyone botch CGI in this day and age? I mean, if you've watched BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, you've seen how good television can do CGI. The Cylon Centurions are just spectacular and you often simply forget that they are produced by a computer program. Then in the movie CAPRICA that introduces the new BSG prequel, we see an individual Cylon that moves from merely looking photo realistic to actually "acting." The subtlety is breathtaking. But BLOOD: THE LAST VAMPIRE? The CGI in this film seems to come from 1996, not 2009. Or take BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, which debuted in the spring of 1997. The "dusting" of vampires looked more convincing in that show than the blobs of blood in this film does in 2009. I watched the film on Blu-ray and perhaps it didn't look so bad on regular DVD, but it was just appalling in high-def. But the visual low point was unquestionably any scene featuring a demon -- with our without his hostage -- running around in an urban landscape. Watching that demon bounce around was the most painful bit of CGI since watching the Hulk bounce around the desert like a tennis ball in Ang Lee's misguided film. But the silly looking blood that spurts out from time to time makes the demon look high tech.

If you can get past the silly CGI, and the needless messiness of the plot, there are some fun moments. I liked the conceit of having a centuries old demon-hunting vampire who looks like an Asian school girl. I never saw the animated film the film is based on, but with some minor improvements this might have been one of the best films around featuring a vampire hero. Saya is a compelling character, well-played by Gianna Jun and really enjoyable in her long string of action sequences. The film would have been improved by a firmer implementation of the "less is more" principle. The length of the film was too brief to support the several story arcs contained within the film. Eliminating one or two would have streamlined the story and allowed them to focus more on character development and strengthening the remaining storylines. This would have left the film with less of a fragmented feel. As it is, the central story of Saya seeking a confrontation with her demonic nemesis (whose identity turned out to be disappointingly pedestrian and expected) is complicated by betrayals from within covert government operations, by a poorly told back story, and an insufficiently articulated story in the present.

All that aside, the film was still fairly entertaining. Its many flaws keep it from being as much fun as it ought to be, but it certainly is far from a completely waste of time.

5/5 Just Awesome
  by Stephen B. O'Blenis (Nova Scotia, Canada)
Actually improving on the excellent 2002 anime, the new live-action Blood: The Last Vampire is a dynamic horror-action rocket ride through an ancient war of demons that still rages in the modern day. Ji-Hyun Jun of 2003's The Uninvited (listed in Blood's credits simply as 'Gianna', allegedly because it was thought anglicizing the names of the film's Asian actors would make it go over better in English-speaking countries, which sounds kind of bizarre...) plays Saya, the vampiric half-human ultimate weapon of The Council, an ancient organization dedicated to preventing a demonic takeover of the world. They've operated in secret over the ages and Saya is their assasin and most skilled combatant, a superhumanly strong, martial-arts trained immortal warrior armed with a sword charged up with 'dark energy' from the legions of demons it's slain. In 1970s Japan, Saya is sent undercover into a high school for the children of military personell on an American army base that the demon shapeshifters have infiltrated. Saya finds an unlikely ally and friend in Alice McKee (Allison Miller), the daughter of the base's commanding officer, and the two find themselves unexpectedly on the scene of a much larger demonic infiltration than The Council expected, and the cusp of a major demon uprising.

Saya has led a solitary life over the centuries, dedicated only to slaying demons, even though - and this is conveyed subtly rather than stated outright - she's inwardly torn. Her vampire half relates to the demons more than to humans. In one of the movie's most telling moments - happening fairly early on and so not a spoiler - Saya cuts herself and feeds her own blood to a demon she's just mortally wounded, apparantly to ease the pain of its death throes and offer some comfort. We see the origins of Saya - her early years in an isolated mountain village following the death of her demon-hunter father, her training at the hands of a kind old warrior, the tragedies that set her on the course of life she's followed for the last few centuries. We don't, however, see the origins of the demon war in any detail (I'd love to see this part delved into in a sequel); hence we don't see if the demons really are just purely malevolent, bloodhungry beasts, or if they have some other motivation for the war, 'their side of the story' so to speak. Questions along this line have occured to Saya as well, as seen in flashbacks. So she's spent ages fighting a war that she has doubts about, and locking those doubts inside. She's also led a friendless existance. The other agents of The Council are her allies, but not her friends. The bond she forms with Alice has an immediate effect. Saya is very quick and violent in her actions, but at least once in the latter parts of the movie she seems to restrain herself because, for the first time in ages, there's actually someone who she cares what they think of her. The duo of Saya and Alice compliment each other very well: although Alice has next to nil fighting skills and has to depend almost exclusively on Saya in physical situations, it's Alice that the emotionally damaged Saya starts to depend on psychologically.

The monsterous, bloody action is tremendous. It walks a line between the enormously stylized and deliberately exaggerated-for-symbolic-effect action of Asian epics like Hero and the more realistic (as in the context of otherworldy creatures or phenomena, not what regular humans could do) vibe that Asian horror movies often strive for, ending up along the general lines of a slightly easternized relative of Underworld (Unrated Extended Cut). Blood: The Last Vampire is the only movie I've seen where things like a sword cutting an enemy straight down the middle and in two actually looked realistic. There are a couple of moments that could be argued to be too over the top, but they worked for me with the overall flow of the movie. The CGI effects on the demons in certain scenes could have been better (and this will probably become a major point of contention for fans accustomed to action movies that can afford a hundred million dollars for the FX budget alone) but, while they weren't the greatest, they certainly weren't the worst - and that includes movies that probably had vastly bigger budgets. And these effects in question only come to play in a couple of scenes. The rest of the time, the special effects (CGI included) are just fine.

The only other real drawback is that you could argue the movie was too short. With the amount of ground they're covering it could have been a full hour longer. I prefer to think that the aspects that got short play in this will just be picked up on in a sequel (I don't know if that's Likely) and expanded there - the origins of the war, more screen time for some of the supporting characters, etc. But the quick pace, in my opinion, didn't hurt things at all. It moved fast, hit hard, and unlike a lot of movies that go this fast most of the time, it didn't lose its emotional punch or the ability to drop hints at a much larger overall saga than the one chapter we're witnessing here. This is one of the year's best and it's a shame it's flown under the radar of much of the moviewatching public. Highest recommendation.

1/5 Dont bother with this, GO watch the Anime film its based on
  by J. Burgos (West Hollywood, CA United States)
About 30 minutes into this movie I realized one thing: why did I bother to rent it. About 15 minutes after that I realized a second thing: what else is on TV right now. Yep, after about 45 minutes I took the disk out and put it back in the netflix sleeve, shipping it back the next morning. This movie pretends to be based on the hit anime movie of the same name, but therein do the similarities begin and end. Save yourself the time (I am sure your time is as valuable as mine) and rent/buy/watch the original anime movie. Even if you are not a fan of anime I promise you, its a far superior movie to this one, in every way.