Crying Freeman

A potter-turned-legendary-hitman who sheds tears after each killing (wuss!) falls in love with a woman and uses this love to defy his masters and kill everyone who stands in his way. Forgive me if I've made this sound interesting, because it really isn't.

Yo Hinomura/Freeman (Mark Dacascos)
Emu O'Hara (Julie Condra)
Detective Forge (Rae Dawn Chong)
Koh (Byron Mann)
Ryuji Hanada (Masaya Kato)
Lady Hanada (Yôko Shimada)
Shido Shimazaki (Mako)
Detective Netah (Tchéky Karyo)
Takeshi Shimazaki (Kevan Ohtsji)

Year: 1995
Censorship Rating: MA (for sex and violence)

"Crying Freeman" is the live action version of an anime that was also a manga. Or was that a manga before it was an anime? I have trouble keeping up, which is one of the reasons why I try to avoid reviewing manga-inspired movies if they are also an anime. Regardless, someone thought it would be a good idea to take a Japanese comic, set it in predominantly in Vancouver, hire a French director, cast a Hawaiian as a Japanese hitman and then hire actors from all round the globe to fill in other parts. Unfortunately, such decisions haven't made "Crying Freeman" that interesting (in either a good or a bad way) to watch.

The opening credits focus on the tattoo of a dragon on a toned male body. After lots of loving shots of this guy's abs, back and pecs, the dragon comes to life, comes off his body and flies around the screen. [With a start like this, do not be surprised if someone walking in on you thinks that you are watching gay porn.] We open in a large study with a crackling fireplace. A female narrator tells us that for the first time in "20 years" she is "alone" but has met "a man, a killer" who will kill her. The narrator turns to camera from her writing desk in order to give us a flashback.

[Aside: CGI animated credits? Check. Opens with a narration? Check. Narrator is shown writing down in her diary to give us that narration? Check. Flashback in the first sixty seconds of the movie? Check. All these early indicators point to a Bad Film.]

Apparently while in "San Francisco, to paint" in an isolated wilderness area, she sees an organised crime execution, which involves lots of slow mo running through a forest and shooting. The hunted don't fair too well, with all the bodyguards getting killed, then the main target also catches a bullet. With this final death, the killer sheds a few silent tears before inserting a special magazine (with a flashing red LED light in it) into his gun and throwing it away. The gun explodes a few seconds later [fortunately setting fire to nothing we can see, despite later scenes showing use the incredible flammability of this universe]. The killer moves towards the painter deliberately towards the painter and introduces himself - "My name is Yo". She looks away for a second and when she looks back, he is gone.

[Aside: What a great killer. Not only does he leave a witness, he tells her his name too! I'm half surprised he didn't give her a hotel room key before dropping his signed memoirs into her handbag. It's not a great way to build any mystery around a character when he looks like he tried to pick up right after finishing a hit - it makes him look sleazy instead.]

Flashback over - back in the large study, the painter blows out the candles on her birthday cake before spraying a bottle of champagne over a portrait of Yo that forms tears in its eyes. "He is called the Freeman and he will free me," she flatly intones.

At Vancouver Airport, Freeman [I'm not going to call him Yo past this point] arrives with a suitcase. At Customs, a female officer opens the case to find it filled with clay - Freeman says he's a potter and needs the best clay he can get to make the best products. Weirdly, the woman looks charmed by his flat and slightly arrogant explanation (including him sounding impatient to get through Customs) until her supervisor steps in and lets Freeman go through. [Okay, Customs isn't a customer service industry and trying to push a Customs Officer into getting you moved through more quickly would usually result in you getting eyed more closely... especially when all you've brought into the country is a suitcase of clay. Which may or may not be something Customs would want to quarantine anyway, because wet soil might hold bad stuff for Canada in it. For her supervisor to step in, like she's the clumsy work experience girl in a fast food restaurant, and move someone who is already acting oddly through Customs really makes me wonder if the writer had ever been to an airport and caught a plane.].

In the car, Freeman cuts through the clay and pulls out guns from inside it. After a bit of tension between Freeman and his apparent superior who is sitting in the front seat - Freeman: "I'm going home,"; Superior: "You have no home" - we learn the Freeman killed the son of a crime boss when in San Fransisco and now the crime boss himself is in Vancouver, "exactly where we want him to be."

At Vancouver City Hall, Detective Forge gets introduced to Interpol Detective Netah, "her new boss". They have a frosty introduction - Netah isn't the chatty sort. In the following meeting involving lots of high-up officials and police officers, a Mr Shimazaki (who's the crime boss) talks about his son's death and how there was a witness - Emu O'Hara - who lives in Vancouver. Netah sends Forge to get O'Hara while the other people in the room talk angrily about the situation. [I'll say - imagine the headlines: "Japanese Crime Boss Meets With City Hall". That'd end some careers pretty fast, I'd imagine.] Shimazaki says that the Freeman, "a very powerful enforcer for the Sons of the Dragons", will target O'Hara. We also get told more about the mythology of the Freeman, but let's keep it simple and say he's badass. Shimazaki says they have 48 hours to find Freeman and that they "have been warned", because after that there will be a gang war. [I'll have to say that the police chief and city officials take being threatened by a foreign crime boss very well - they don't get angry or anything.] The issue is that no-one knows what Freeman looks like, and maybe O'Hara can tell them who to look for.

Outside in a park, Freeman puts on a clay mask, readies his gun and does a slo-mo jump down a 10m drop before heading towards City Hall.

Freeman's superior is positioned on a rooftop with a sniper rifle. When Shimazaki emerges from City Hall (surrounded by bodyguards) the sniper rifle is used to kill Shimazaki from a distance, as would be sensible blow up cars nearby, throwing things into confusion and giving Freeman some cover. We enter the slo-mo gunplay zone, where Freeman kills all the bodyguards and Shimazaki while only wounding police and not getting hit by any of the numerous bullets sent in his direction.

Forge is just bringing O'Hara back to City Hall [she must live close by] but leaves to investigate the gunfire. Freeman gets past Forge and manages to share eye contact with O'Hara before escaping in the getaway car (and using one of those exploding magazines to destroy his gun and provide some more cover). Freeman is then driven to O'Hara's house and told to finish her off (he elects to take a long switchblade to do the job), but finds her not at the house. Instead, he discovers the painting she did of him.

[Aside: Before I move too much further on, it seems weird that everyone knows where O'Hara lives, yet none of the gangs have yet picked her up. Shimazaki going to the police just seems odd, and how did he know that she had seen the murder of his son? I don't think O'Hara would have told anyone. I guess the audience is just meant to accept these things because they are in the script.

Another thing... I can't take the name Emu seriously. It's pronounced "E-moo", but every time I write it, I think Emu as in the bird. This doesn't help me accept the gravity of her character. Also, by the way she behaves - depressed, awaiting death, making bland statements that aren't as nearly profound as she thinks - a better name for her would have been Emo.]

Netah tries to put the pressure on O'Hara to talk about Freeman, but she won't. Forge (with Netah) drives her back home and gives her a personal alarm to use, but O'Hara feels fatalistic about the whole thing... maybe because her father had been a judge who was killed by the mafia in her family home. (This is told through some more narration, about it was all her fault, blah blah blah. However, instead of sounding like a deeply traumatic experience, O'Hara sounds so bored as to almost be asleep.)

Inside, O'Hara emerges from her shower to find the painting of Freeman in the fire and the real Freeman waiting for her.

Outside, Netah runs into a well-dressed woman among the trees. He tries to radio Forge, but she doesn't respond.

Inside, O'Hara lies on her bed, talking to Freeman about she "wanted him to come back". Freeman sheds his clothes in a nano-second [understandable, really] and joins O'Hara on the bed.

Outside, Netah returns to the car to find Forge unconscious and an old acquaintance, Ryuji Hanada, waiting for him. Ryuji tells Netah that he "belongs to us" and wants him to "look the other way" because "we put you where you" got to in the police force - Ryuji wants Freeman's head and leadership of the Shizamaki crime syndicate. (Forge stirs enough that means she may have heard some of this.) Netah is a bit against the idea, but gets knocked unconscious for not being polite enough.

Inside the house, Freeman has movie-you-don't-see-anything-style sex with O'Hara. They finish just in time for Freeman to hear the bad guys break in downstairs. He climbs up to the top of the bedroom door in his underwear [and there's a great package shot of Dacascos here for those who care about those kind of things] and waits. Two goons enter the room and oogle O'Hara on the bed [and you still can't see anything arousing, so these goons must not get out much] which gives Freeman time to kill them both with his knife. (O'Hara does look a bit horrified by the violence, but maybe she's just concerned that they are messing up her otherwise sterile household.) Ryuji then enters the bedroom with a gun at the ready, only to catch a knife in the back from Freeman's superior. Freeman gets tossed a gun, which he unloads into Ryuji while dodging Ryuji's return fire. Ryuji's bullets tear up the room, including O'Hara's bed. O'Hara gets clipped before Ryuji finally slumps motionless in the hallway.

Superior [oh what the heck - his name is Koh, not that we find out until most of the movie has gone by] tells Freeman to kill O'Hara and leaves. Freeman goes through a monumental internal struggle over the order [or at least that's what he is meant to do, but Mark Dacascos is so wooden that the door behind him shows a greater range] and finds he can't kill O'Hara. He carries her out. We get to see that Ryuji is still alive, but too weak to stop Freeman leave. The well-dressed woman shows up after Freeman leaves and watches Ryuji get to his feet - he is alive because he was wearing a bulletproof vest. She then french kisses him as she pulls the (oddly bloodless) knife from his back.

In the getaway car, Koh is angry at Freeman for not killing O'Hara. Freeman makes Koh drop O'Hara at a hospital.

O'Hara narrates [oh goody! ... not... ] that her "father died" at this hospital and how it was her fault the alarm was off and her parents' killer(s) got into the house. [Boy, what a barrel of laughs to be around, hey? Everything reminds her of death and her guilt.] A family friend named Mary shows up to talk to here. Mary is wearing lots of big, shapeless clothes (hint, hint).

Outside O'Hara's room, Forge tells Netah to ease off O'Hara.

O'Hara escapes the hospital by disguising herself in Mary's clothes. The cops set off in pursuit. The cab she gets into is being driven by a Japanese goon organised by Freeman.

Forge tells Netah that she knows about his links to Shizamaki and that this is "his last" ride as a police officer. Immediately after, a cement mixer driven by another Freeman-led Japanese goon rams their car, causing a slo-mo crash and roll. Netah gets out and tries to save Forge, but she is killed when the car explodes [not that Netah, who is only a few metres away, even gets singed by this explosion, but anyway...]. Netah gets some slo-mo grief action.

[Aside: I'd like to suggest that if you have some incriminating dirt on someone (for instance: you know that a cop is under the thumb of a crime syndicate), then perhaps the best course of action isn't to tell them that their career is over because you are going to sing like a canary to everyone who will listen before you've actually told anyone else. Although Netah didn't kill Forge himself, the way everything played out you expected him to do so. Instead, the movie has a third party do it, then has the gall to have Netah look upset about what happened. At no point in "Crying Freeman" is Netah presented as a sympathetic figure so this scene plays out against expectations and is a little odd. Perhaps Netah is meant to be a morally conflicted character who wants to achieve order but has accepted bribes in the past... or perhaps I'm putting more thought into his characterisation than those who wrote the script.]

O'Hara gets dropped at the airport by Freeman's goons and flies to ... somewhere.

In Shanghai, China [oh, THAT Shanghai] some innocent underground muck stirrers [that's what they look like they're doing] get brutally gunned down by guys in suits. Ryuji gets to slo-mo walk in, shirtless so that you can see his large tattoo, and tell the remaining stirrers that he has a message for the Dragons - "I declare war on the Dragon. I want the Freeman or I will return to China." [Huh? Is that a threat? Did I miss something important?] Ryuji then menaces the remaining muck stirrers a bit more to show how EEE-vil he is.

Cut to Hokkaido, Japan. O'Hara arrives at a potter's house deep in the forest - it's where Freeman lives. He meets her in a glen.

Among lots of shadows in a mysterious place, Koh gets given instructions (in unsubtitled Japanese) from a mysterious old crone in white.

Back at the pottery barn, Freeman and O'Hara bond over how in clay "the darkness is as necessary as the light". Freeman flashes back to how he became a killer...

At his first exhibition [man, those things are dangerous - how many movies have you seen where things go horribly wrong at peoples' first exhibitions?] a strange man is killed by thugs and Yo [because he's not the Freeman yet] sees it happen. Yo realises [with some truly trite dialogue, such as " a dead man's eyes are a curse to those that behold them"] that the man left film in one of his pots. After developing the film [because everyone has the chemicals and equipment to develop their own pictures, especially potters], Yo finds it shows the two thugs torturing a man who has a large dragon tattoo on his body.

Yo sets out to leave Japan, but gets knocked out by a crone with some acupuncture. He wakes up naked and tied to a statue where the crone puts some brainwashing acupuncture techniques on him. [Acupuncture - is there anything it can't do?] Later, Yo wakes up in his hotel room, only to quickly get a call from the crone who tells him he has to kill a mob boss with the knife he's been given.

At a restaurant where the mob boss is eating, Yo makes the hit using a bunch of flowers to hide the knife and then manages to take out the bodyguards by throwing a bottle of liquor into an open fire - it explodes like it contained dynamite and engulfs the two goons in a fireball - before stabbing them to death with what looks to be a fork. Yo sheds tears while doing this.

Later, he ends up naked and tied to the statue again. Apparently, because he survived he has the "dark gift of the deathwalker". Also, it is his burden to cry when he kills because of that is the way of the Freeman blah blah blah. More extreme acupuncture follows and Yo wakes up in front of a mirror to find he's got a large dragon tattoo on his back. [There is some unintentionally hilarity here in that 1) it looks like he's been chained up using his testicles as main point of contact and 2) the Freeman's cry of dispair sounds like he just stubbed his toe than has had his entire life stolen from him.] Koh shows up (and here we learn that his name is Koh) to ham things up with a few "we own you now" lines.

End of flashback. Freeman is crying again. O'Hara says the spell must be broken because he didn't kill her [awww... not killing her must mean he loves her!]. Koh pops up to bring Freeman back - the Dragons have been attacked (we get a montage of the what happened to the muck stirrers again, in case we'd forgotten) in an attempt to draw Freeman out. Freeman agrees to head back with Koh, but again refuses to kill O'Hara.

Lots of bad guys gather at the Shizamaki estate to pay their respects to the dead crime boss. Stuff happens, but some of it's in unsubtitled japanese, so I don't understand it. In short:

• Ryuji takes a phone call that will let Koh and Freeman bluff their way into the funeral;
• Koh kills the guy who made the phone call, but Freeman stops Koh from killing the girl who was in his room (likely a prostitute) because "she knows the code of the underworld";
• Netah also gets into the estate (in front of a lot of other cops, which has got to raise some suspicions) and faces Ryuji over the massacre of the muck stirrers and how Ryuji was the one who told the Dragons where to find Shizamaki's son so they could kill him;
• Netah officially meets Ryuji's wife, who was the woman in white outside O'Hara's place;
• Ryuji's wife indicates that they know where O'Hara is; and
• Netah follows Ryuji's wife to an isolated area to talk to her.

However, Netah gets set up by Ryuji's wife so there is an incriminating photograph of them both - Ryuji's wife indicates she'll claim rape if Netah tries to move against them. Netah decides that if he's going to have the threat hanging over his head, he may as well take the prize too, so Ryuji's wife and him have sex in a closet - Ryuji's wife is topless, and hangs onto these leather straps that I sure don't have in MY closet (and you get to see she's got a large tattoo on her back as well - apparently anyone who gets a big tattoo gains fighting powers in this universe). Anyway...

Koh and Freeman present themselves in front of Ryuji and are tested, again in unsubtitled Japanese. They pass (for now...).

During sex, Netah realises that it is the wife who is making the plays to become leader of the crime syndicate, not Ryuji [which, in my opinion, is a much nicer way to realise who is behind all the schemes, as opposed to the usual supervillain technique of tying someone to a death device before spilling their plans].

Both Koh and Freeman take drinks that may be poisoned (again, unsubtitled Japanese), but take antidote pills (using sleight of hand so they aren't seen) shortly after to stop any effects. At this point, Koh and Freeman start killing people - Ryuji gets set on fire twice, stabbed, shot and still doesn't die, while goons are dying left, right and centre. Ryuji gets a knife through the hand that pins him to a wall and to assist him into the next world, Koh drops one of those explosive magazines down Ryuji's pants.

At the sound of gunfire, Ryuji's wife pulls a handgun from... well, who knows? ... and looks to get ready to investigate.

Outside, Freeman kills numerous goons with a handgun while walking and not dodging around that much. [Apparently, if you walk purposefully enough, bullets will just miss you. Also, it's helpful that the bad guys run in straight lines at him and don't even try to aim.] He runs into the wife and disarms her. Koh then shows up to kill Freeman for "breaking the law" over O'Hara. However, Ryuji makes an incredible shot [I don't even think Ryuji could see Koh, but IITS] that mortally wounds Koh. Ryuji then blows up [!!]. Koh says his goodbyes to his "friend" [yes, the one he just tried to kill] Freeman. Freeman leaves. Netah shows up to see Ryuji's widow put some bullets into Koh.

Back at the pottery place, O'Hara narrates that she knows Freeman came back last night before she goes on a walk through the gardens. She finds herself surrounded by goons who want to know where Freeman is. Freeman kills all of these goons with archery [it was very helpful of the goons not to react at all to seeing their buddies being hit by arrows and by standing still when under attack]. Ryuji's widow arrives on the beach with more goons. Freeman breaks open his secret weapons stash and sets a bomb to go off in 5:06 [which is really an odd time. Why five minutes and six seconds? Ahh, I no longer care...]

The movie commences with the bad guy slaughter. Goons run directly at Freeman firing their guns; Freeman mows them down using semi-automatic rifles and grenades until there is 3:48 left on the bomb counter [in movie time - in reality, it seemed shorter, but with all the slo-mo it's hard to judge].

Wife and goons head towards Freeman. Netah gets the drop on Freeman [err, how? At no point in the movie has anyone come close to sneaking up on Freeman, but Netah manages to jump out from a pretty open corner and shoot Freeman? Honestly, it doesn't make the movie more thrilling, it makes everything else look more stupid]. Netah closes in to put the final bullet into Freeman, but gets shot by O'Hara (with Freeman's gun) for his troubles. Netah goes rolling down some steps to add injury to injury.

Freeman gets up and shrugs off his bullet wound to face off against the wife and her goons. They all switch to katanas (ie swords) for a final slo-mo fight. In what is probably the best fighting sequence of the movie, we get to see some nice acrobatic dodging and attacks by Freeman as he makes coleslaw of the goons. Freeman beats Ryuji's ex by [wait for it] throwing a knife up in the air, fighting some other goons, then catching the knife and stabbing the ex-wife in the heart as she tries to cut him down from behind [so, even in the best sequence, we still have our lame bits].

[Oh, I also don't think Freeman sheds one tear in this bit, so say goodbye to the only piece of characterisation he had.]

Freeman tells the former Mrs Ryuji that if she removes the knife she'll die. In return for saving her life, Freeman wants her to pretend that he is dead so that he and O'Hara can disappear. The ex-wife doesn't want to help her "enemy", but Freeman removes the blade and gives her the option to "live honourably or die miserably". She elects to live and promises "on her honour" to cover for Freeman.

Freeman bandages the ex-wife [showing a stab to the heart can be helped by wrapping come bandages around it] and leaves her with the injured Netah. Netah goes for a gun to shoot Freeman - "I didn't give my word" - only to be shot in the back and killed by the ex-wife - "but I did".

Freeman and O'Hara leave just as the bomb goes off [leaving us to ignore that 1) it probably took more than 5:06 to kill all those goons, 2) it certainly would have taken longer than 3:48 to kill those goons in a sword fight, stab ex-wife through the heart, give her an ultimatum, bandage her up and then walk away, and 3) the ex-wife probably wouldn't have survived the blast, since being stabbed in the heart might slow you down a little bit if you had to run away from an explosion, so their plan is ruined... but the film is almost over and we haven't had yet reached our explostion quota, so things go boom]. We get some more closing narration by O'Hara about how they will still be looked for because "the code of honour demands it", but that they will now be able to live "free".

[You know, even when they get away from their enemies scott free, O'Hara still finds something to mope over. What a great character.]

Looking at certain message boards, there are lots of people who think this movie is awesome. I'm not one of those people. "Crying Freeman" is slow, overly melodramatic, filled with underwritten characters, stilted performances and with not nearly enough action. I'm aware that director Christope Gans was still new to things at this stage - he'd certainly improved by the time he did "Brotherhood of the Wolf" - but it doesn't mean I can forgive what is often a very dull film.

I will give that the movie is very well shot and the slo-mo bits (of which there are many) are pulled off nicely. Sadly, "Crying Freeman" only seems to hit its stride in the final climatic fight, long after I'd stopped caring what was going on. Mark Dacascos pulls off some moves in that final fight that show some impressive abilities, but it's all over too quickly.

The major fault in "Crying Freeman" is the acting, which I can describe in one word: wooden. Mark Dacascos and Julie Condra act as well as century-old redwoods. While they may have had chemistry off-screen (since they met on this film and married), there is zilch of it on-screen. Emu O'Hara is the kind of woman that would make any man run for the hills with her incredibly flat and fatalistic outlook on life, while Freeman has no charisma or depth as portrayed. Better actors may have been able to emote what was going on and add some substance to the characters, but instead we get the equivalent of two planks of wood who, for no particular reason, fall in love. Only Yôko Shimada as Ryuji's wife really stands out as who is interesting to watch (and I'm not just saying that because she gets topless) and shows more emotion than either stoic indifference or tough-guy postering.

Now, it may just have been a result of the version I watched, but having sections of the movie use unsubtitled Japanese just made things more confusing in a movie that cried out for a bit more explanation about why certain things were happening. It didn't break the movie - there are much bigger flaws in "Crying Freeman" than not being able to understand passages of the dialogue - but it certainly didn't help things along.

Overall, "Crying Freeman" might be one of the better examples of a manga / anime turned into a real-life action movie, but when you are up against other films like "The Guyver", this is hardly a ringing endorcement of quality.

Being a film adaption of a manga designed for the US market, "Crying Freeman" takes the original material, removes lots of the sex, nudity and violence of the original and tries to fill in the holes with narrative and an extended love story. It doesn't really work that well. I'm not saying that more sex, nudity and violence would have saved the movie, but it sure would have made it less boring.

This is likely to be one of those "watch once and forget"-type films where you struggle to remember anything about it when the credits roll. Some people love it for the cinematography, but cinematography does not a good movie make on it's own.

Sadly, "Crying Freeman" is too dull to even be considered funktastic. Sure, some of it is worth a groan or two - the catch-the-knife bit at the end, the narration, Freeman being chained up by his nuts - but nothing really jumps out as memorable.

Date of review: 10 March 2006