Admirable film.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

One of the worst films I've ever seen. The acting was hammy and stilted, the plot and action scenes were amateurish and unbelievable. The cinematography tried to be arty farty and failed miserably. Avoid.

I expected more but it's not too shabby. As live action films come they are either amazing (lone wolf and cub), terrible (devilman) or goes unrecognised (Ichi the killer) but the crying freeman was neither. While I have not seen the animated version or read the manga for that matter I'm guessing that this swayed a lot from the basic story or was largely condensed. my reason for thinking this is because the story was so basic. A killer falls in love with a woman who sees his face and decides to let her live and the movie is about the consequences of his actions. What we get is your basic 90s action movie with lots of slow motion death sequences to make up runtime. It isn't particularly violent and in my opinion, it suffers because of this it almost feels like it was made for TV. That being sad it wasn't particularly bad for any reason but I can not fully recommend to anyone.

I keep seeing this movie compared to anime or martial arts movies, and while I can see its roots in both genres, Crying Freeman is not really either. It might be a genre to itself.Years ago I read a book named "The Painted Bird" that I thought deserved to be taught as a classic because its clean, spare style deserved study. But what really set it apart for me was that it was permeated with violence - it was about WWII and life under the brutal rule of Nazi invaders - but its treatment was so spare and clean it somehow rose above its subject matter into the mythic and poetic.That's how this movie struck me. It is violent without being blood-soaked, has some highly charged eroticism without sinking into porn, and says more with the star's silence than could ever be told with dialog. The filming style is as spare and beautiful as I remember the text in "The Painted Bird" and can't be separated from the overall mythic impact of the movie.I'm not saying this is a world-changing movie. It didn't give me some sort of epiphany, and at my age I'm no big fan of martial arts movies or anime cartoons. I'm just saying there is something quite beautiful about the way this movie fits together that elevates it above a subject matter that could have been cheapened into a spatter flick or bloated into a pure CG actioner. It's worth watching if only to sink your mind into the elusive, mythic quality that sets this movie apart.

Crying Freeman starts in San Francisco as Yo Hinomura AKA the Crying Freeman (Mark Dacascos) who works as an assassin for the Sons of the Dragon kills Takeshi Shimazaki (Kevin Ohtsji) & a couple of his bodyguards (Tong Lung & Kiyoto Matumoto) all witnessed by vacationing painter Emu O'Hara (Julie Condra) but Freeman lets her live... Jump to Vancouver B.C. where by a complete & utter coincidence Emu & Takeshi's father Shido Shimazaki (Mako) live, in a sort of 'kill two birds with one stone' situation Freeman takes out Shido in broad daylight in front of the court house & then turns his attentions to Emu who he just can't bring himself to kill so he has sex with her instead, hell it probably seemed like a good idea at the time. Back in Japan & a Yakuza bloke type guy named Ryuji Hanada (Masaya Kato) challenges the Sons of the Dragon & in particular Freeman as his head will make him powerful or something like that...This French, Canadian, Japanese & American co-production was co-written & directed by Frenchman Christophe Gans & made by a lot of people with unpronounceable names both in front & behind the camera this is, in my humble opinion, total crap. The script by Gans, Thierry Cazals & the uncredited duo of Roger Avery & Laurie Finstad-Knizhnik which takes itself extremely seriously is based on the popular Manga comic by Kazuo Koike & Ryoichi Ikegami & subsequent Japanese Anime which I have seen but unfortunately it was back in the 90's & can't remember a single thing about it other than it was better than this live-action version. For a start it's pretty slow going & repetitive along with the fact that there's a criminal lack of proper over-the-top Anime action, there are constant dull shoot outs where the Freeman can shoot & kill dozens of bad guy's who no matter how hard they try or how heavy they are in number just can't even get a shot off, I hope these Japanese mafia bosses aren't paying these guy's that much because they ain't much use! Then there's the fact that at least some of it had to be Americanised with a couple of American cops & some of it being set in the US, the storyline is weak & is your basic inner struggle within a powerful crime organisation with someone wanting to take it over. I suppose Freeman is supposed to be some sort of anti-hero as he kills swiftly but also has some sort of moral code & predictably turns soft when the time comes to kill a piece of skirt who he fancies. It's all been done before & much better as well, from the rubbish James Bond style opening titles to the happy ending as the Freeman & his bird ride off into the sunset on a speedboat Crying Freeman is a crying shame...Director Gans making his full length film debut clearly doesn't know how to stage or edit an action sequence, this is really hard going actually. For a start there's absolutely no variety in the action with a constant stream of virtually identical shoot outs although there is some samurai sword play at the end which is the only reason I gave this 2 stars out of 10 instead of just the 1, the violence is tame & the blood very restrained with only one blood spurt right at the end. Then there's the constant annoying use of slow motion, seriously this film has more slow motion in it than any other film I can remember seeing. In fact if all the slow motion scenes were played back at normal speed Crying Freeman would probably run over 40 minutes shorter, everything is seen in slow motion from people running & walking to people falling over to people shooting guns from drink being poured to sex scenes there isn't 5 minutes that go by without at least something being shown in slow motion. Now this is fine when it's used properly but here director Gans just does it for the hell of it or because he mistakenly thought it looked cool & would automatically make his film stylish which it most certainly doesn't.With a supposed budget of about $5,000,000 this had a much bigger budget than I thought while I was watching it, I'm not sure where all the money went as there are no big stars or particularly big action scenes either. The filmmakers obviously didn't go anywhere near Japan & it was shot entirely in Vancouver in Canada. The acting isn't up to much I'm afraid, if you like happy stories Mark Dacascos & his co-star Julie Condra actually married each other after the film in real life.Crying Freeman is what I would personally term as a total waste of 100 odd minutes, I didn't like it & have no fondness for it at all. Disappointing as far as I'm concerned, stick to the Manga & Anime instead.