I just got back from seeing this movie and was disappointed. I actually knew relatively little about the movie aside from the plot synopsis going in, and still I was disappointed.

The more I think about the movie, the lower I have been setting the ranking. The acting was for the most part okay or sub-par: the main character, Saya, had one look, the sulking schoolgirl. Alice, the white girl side-kick seemed to do well, but have terrible direction, as if her character was never quite in the right mood for the scene.

The action scenes were pretty weak. School girl swings her sword and a demon gets cut in half and super CGI ichor comes out. Whole bunch of demons attack, girl swings her sword and a couple demons fall spurting CGI ichor. I don't need an action scene to be believable, but I do expect it to have life. There was one action scene that reminded me of old school ninja movies (which is actually a good thing) but for the most part the action was dull and little more than a series of decent stills strung together.

The writing was campy and sub-par. A number of scenes caused the audience to laugh because the dialog and scene as a whole just came across as ridiculous.

I think the best way to describe the movie is a Frenchman making an American movie from a Japanese script.

With credit to the creators of this live action edition of Blood: The Last Vampire, they really didn't have much to work with to begin with and before I pick apart the movie I feel obligated to preface with this. As an owner of the original Anime and a fan of the Blood series in itself, I was looking forward to a nice tie-in with the saga of Saya the Femme Vampire Slayer. What I got in this movie was a nice collection of katana action, low-budget CGI and poor acting. This isn't to say that BTLV is a bad movie, just one that I would only recommend to fans of the series itself.

What the movie tries to do with the aforementioned anime, is take that exact same story and expand it a bit to give us some history on Saya. We are shown her human father, vampire mother and even a childhood love interest. Our Saya is given emotion (she even cries a bit) and worst than that, she is given a sidekick in Alice McKee (Allison Miller). Though I found Saya (Gianna Jun) to be a very good casting choice, which coupled with the choppy but interesting action scenes, made her seem similar to the anime Saya, I found Alice to be absolutely unbearable. The character Alice is the American element to the movie, being a rebellious teenager stealing daddy's car, talking back and doing all the annoying things that teenagers in movies tend to do.

The jerky camera angles, made some of the early fighting scenes very confusing. However it does get better as the movie progresses and some of the battles are quite interesting once the camera settles down. The acting was not bad as a whole aside from Alice whose crying and screaming were so fake I found myself shaking my head every time she had a burst of "emotion". The direction was good enough and we get a back story as it progresses unlike the original anime. Still when it ended I was a bit confused about Saya even with the history given and it made me wonder why they didn't stick with more of the elements from the anime series.

If it were only up to actress Gianna Jun and her portrayal of the killer Vampire Saya, I would rank this with high points but the weight of the bad acting by the supporting cast, the already silly story, awful CGI and the unnecessary military portion of the movie drug it down way below that. Although I would watch it again, this would probably be due to my being a fan of the character moreso than a movie watcher.

Full review: www.SpicyMovieDogs.com

BLOOD: THE LAST VAMPIRE is the live action, English language remake of a popular anime from a decade before, itself a filmed version of a manga. The story has a young Japanese schoolgirl travelling the world and battling an evil and sinister cult of vampires who intend to wipe out mankind. So far, so BLADE, but BLOOD manages to get by with serviceable scripting and a fast, no-nonsense approach to storytelling. Obviously this is an action vehicle with plenty of wirework and sword play influenced by Asian cinema, although they really do go overboard on the cartoonish CGI bloodshed which looks absolutely ridiculous throughout and has dated the production quite considerably. The most amusing part (for me) is the presence of numerous British actors playing Americans. EASTENDERS star Larry Lamb is a US general (!), Liam Cunningham a shady agent, and Colin Salmon a kendo instructor. Koyuki, of THE LAST SAMURAI, shows up and has great presence again, but the best part goes to the excellent and immortal Yasuaki Kurata, that Japanese henchman actor of old, who gets a nice meaty part shown entirely in flashback.