Death Trance hits DVD on June 27th.
Here is Death Trance review from Twitchfilm.net:
How on earth did it take so long? The release of Versus six years ago made an instant cult star of Tak Sakaguchi and left fans clamoring for more from the charismatic anti-hero but more has been slow in coming. Despite a string of supporting roles and behind the scenes jobs with Versus director Ryuhei Kitamura in the intervening years Sakaguchi has appeared in only one lead role since - Battlefield Baseball, from Versus producer Yudai Yamaguchi - a situation that has finally changed with the wildly anachronistic fight film Death Trance.
Sakaguchi plays a nameless man, a wandering fighter, who assaults an ancient monastery to steal the legendary coffin that lays within. According to legend if you can open this coffin in the far away forbidden forest it will grant your deepest wishes. The legend, however, is incorrect. The coffin contains a banished goddess, a goddess of destruction and the opening of the coffin can lead only to the destruction of the world and it is up to the only surviving monk - a young, untrained acolyte - to stop the coffin from being opened with only a mystical sword that he is unable to use for assistance.
Given the long awaited re-emergence of Sakaguchi as a leading man and the presence of Versus' action director Yuji Shimomura as director on this film comparisons to Versus are inevitable and well deserved. With a time-fusing plot line that sees wandering samurais weilding rocket launchers and riding motorcycles while ninja warriors have machine guns embedded in the hilts of their katanas Death Trance clearly employs much of the same lunatic energy that made Versus a cult classic. The fighting is plentiful with the film moving quickly between a string of set pieces with little pause for breath. But part of the charm of Versus was the sheer unexpected nature of it, the fact that it was clearly a labor of love made by a crew that scraped together every penny they had to make a loving ode to their favorite films. Can that particular magic be recreated here? Yes and no. In some areas Versus remains the superior film, in others Death Trance is clearly a cut above.
The weaknesses come in two areas. First, the script - particularly the dialogue - is very simplistic. "Are you the man with the coffin?" "Why do you want the coffin?" "I have to get the coffin!" Yes. We get it. There's a coffin and it's bad. But, honestly, nobody is going to watch this for the dialogue so let's just put that particular criticism aside. People are going to watch this for the fight sequences, however, and we quickly realize that Sakaguchi is much more of a brawler than any sort of disciplined martial artist, a fact that leads to a bit of repetition in his sequences. Again, however, Sakaguchi is a star more on the strength of his personal charisma than anything else and that is in full effect throughout and he is smart enough in his secondary role as martial arts choreographer to surround himself with other, stronger martial artists including a capoera fighter and Kentaro Seagal - yes, the son of Steven - in a key role.
On to the strengths.
I have long been of the opinion that Ryuhei Kitamura was only one ingredient in the mix that made Versus and that his importance to the process has been largely over stated. Yudai Yamaguchi has borne that out, carrying the lunatic energy of Versus - an energy largely absent from Kitamura's later, Yamaguchi-free films - into his own directorial work and Yuji Shimomura again makes a good case for that point. Shimomura has a remarkably assured eye and a very clear vision. The production and character design is frequently astounding and the film is beautifully shot. Costuming, weaponry, physical environments, all the little details that fit together to form a convincing reality are handled perfectly. Though Shimomura's limited budget leads to a piece or two of sub-par CGI the work he has done to create a convincing alternate reality deserves very high praise.
Sakaguchi is his normal charismatic self - you could film this guy reading the phone book and make it entertaining - and the supporting cast is uniformly strong, particularly given the above mentioned limitations of the script. Strange as it seems to say this about anyone named Seagal, Kentaro may very well prove to be a rising star. The camera loves him, he is - no surprise - a very talented martial artist, and he is consistently better than the material given to him. Most of the best lines and one of the best action set pieces belong to Seagal and I expect and hope to see more of him in the future.
The action itself is also very good, despite Sakaguchi falling a little too much in love with certain moves, as mentioned above. The capoera piece is excellent - and why don't we see more of this on screen? - as are the ninjas. There are simply so many action sequences in the film that you just don't have time to catch a breath. And while Shimomura plays the anachronisms more straight than, say, Yamaguchi would, you still have a wandering ronin pulling a heat seeking rocket launcher on an opponent, and what's not to love about that?
Death Trance is a film clearly designed and built from the ground up to be 'cult', which is always a bit of a dicey proposition. Luckily the people doing the building here, from on screen talent right on up to the financiers, are themselves cult and so they get it right. The film is very clearly intended as the first in a series and I say bring on part two. Don't keep us waiting for the next Death Trance like we've been waiting for Versus 2.
Almost 31 years old.