It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Violent, great soundtrack, and full of action.This movie has a good story This movie has good music This movie is bloody as hell This movie has an evil villain This movie has emotion This movie has a sexy asian woman lead This movie is awesome

Based on a popular manga series centring around a young girl who is raised by assassins and eventually set on a mission to kill off some warlords who threaten the peace of Japan.More samurai than you can shake a stick at, yes we've seen this kind of thing before but for some reason that doesn't matter. There is nothing better than seeing a well made Japanese film about their past, yes this has a lot of artistic license and is more fantasy based but its still damn fun.A curious set of characters all led by their strict master and all played well by the cast, Aya Ueto as 'Azumi' is ultra cute, not the most authentic looking samurai but this is manga adaptation. The rest of the cast are unknown to me but do the job well, nothing too special or original but its entertaining. The deadly character of 'Bijomaru Mogami' is fun, an egotistical lethal merc who kills pretty much anyone for fun and is dressed all in flowing white, think along the lines of 'Vega' from the Street Fighter II video game franchise.Action is fast fluid and bloody when it kicks in as you might expect but its not over done. There is the odd moment of high flying wire work which spoils it in my view, they love that in Japan for some reason. The plot is simple and easily followed, the film looks great in terms of costumes, weapons and location and it comes across perfectly as an adaptation.7/10

A very cool and awesome martial arts movie. Anime come to life in a live action movie. And the Azumi character is a very cute Japanese girl who can kick some ass! (I might be a bit biased on this point.)Very well done, camera-wise, action-wise and acting. The bloody "gore" shots were a bit lacking, almost trying not to show it. It is dubbed, but the dubbed audio is the same as you would hear in an anime, so it was interesting to see and hear that in live action. The photography was beautiful, although some bits might have been CG, and the action sequences were/are spectacular.Trust me, worth the effort to rent and/or buy. But in case you don't like awesome movies... I would rent it first. I gave it a 10. A must see for fans of martial arts, anime, and cute Japanese girls. :)

I'm a fan of movies like the Seven Samurai, and others like it, but this movie... It was frankly a yawn-fest.First off, I stopped watching this about half-way though because I got bored with it, so I'll be up front about not having seen the whole movie. The acting was sub-par, the villains and their motivations cardboard cutouts of any Asian warlord stereotype you've ever seen, the protagonists not much better.It seemed to try to imply that the situation was *serious*, that the bad guys were *evil*, but... Between the 'pop stars somehow landed a role in an actual movie' heroes and the 'warlord #12, #15 and #1324', it just failed miserably.In fact, literally every person on screen was a walking stereotype. It was that bad.Unless you're someone who was a fan of the original manga, or are very easily satisfied by anyone in a movie who swings a sharp sword around, prepare to be disappointed.