I Am a Hero (2016)

De zéro à héros…

Le cliché du loser qui devient un héros est commun, mais c'est aussi un des clichés que le Japon maîtrise tout particulièrement. Suzuki Hideo est ce loser : serpillière pour qui le veut, mangaka inconnu et largué par sa petite amie. Jusqu'à ce que Tokyo voit ses habitants être transformés en zombies.

Les infectés ne mutent pas de la même façon, donnant ainsi une belle ribambelle de ZQN variés. Les contaminés gardent des souvenirs humains, ce qui donne lieu à des scènes franchement hilarantes et qui apportent une plus-value au film. Visuellement, les ZQN sont réussis avec des maquillages parfois grossiers, mais efficaces.

Le film est séparé en deux actes : la fuite de Tokyo et le centre commercial (qui rappelle sans aucun mal « Dawn of the Dead » de George Romero). Si le premier acte est plein de tension et de précipitation, le second manque un peu de punch, bien qu'il retrouve toute son énergie dans l'acte final. J'imagine qu'une suite devait être pensée, notamment pour le personnage de Hiromi qui n'est pas du tout exploité.

La photographie est superbe avec une mise en scène sanglante et un poutrage à la hauteur de mes attentes.

En bref, I Am a Hero est un film fun avec un personnage ordinaire qui connaît son heure de gloire.

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This one deserves a review so here it is.

I Am Hero is based on a Manga of the same name and It has been one of my favorites in recent years and let me remind you Manga is not yet finished so the movie as well, but that doesn't mean the movie will leave you hanging, in fact they adapted the best ARC in the Manga and finished it damn well and they did convey that theme in the Manga in this movie, so what is the theme? Well just read damn the title my friends.

The story revolves around Hideo who is a once a promising mangaka but his dreams always stay out of reach for the reason that his characters were pretty normal like him, he has a relationship that is about to end, in short he is somewhat your typical loser protagonist. One day zombie apocalypse happens, miraculously he's one of those who survive then he met this girl that he promised to protect with his life. One interesting thing about this movie is its setting, it is in Japan where there are only few people who owns a gun and our protagonist owns it as a hobby. This gun is vital to the story as owning a shotgun at this situation means you are the king, this became the point of conflict with humans in the story as someone wanting it badly enough to kill for it and the way it serves as a metaphor for Hideo's character development is a work of a mad genius, like only in japan, the land of metaphors.

Visual effect are spectacular as they did something very different here, zombies veins are black, they deform differently once they became zombies, They move and contorts like insects. The sound effects are amazing too, the squishy sounds once their head exploded was done right. Music is intense if it needs to be intense. Song at the end it quite nice, it captures the atmosphere of the movie well.

Oizumi Yo gives a solid performance his zero to hero transformation was believable, though he doesn't look like the character in the Manga at least his persona reflects hideo, kudos to him. As for Nagasawa Masami and Arimura Kasumi, they were at least mediocre. I was especially disappointed with Nagasawa Masami's character cause that character is very different from the manga, her character supposed to be a baddass. Kasumi Arimura's character didn't do as much here so I can't asses how he did in this film.

So how would this stack up against other zombie titles? well let's say to me it made zombies scary again and kind off remind me why this genre has been one of the favorites for these past decade and that last minutes was a FREAKING-INTENSELY-GORY-HEAD-EXPLODING FINALE.

Check my Blog for other reviews & other JDramas stuffs. (｡◕‿‿◕｡)
https://thatjapanesedramaguy.blogspot.com/

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