I have to start out by saying that I have been on a driving movie kick lately, which has made it hard to come by good movies. I normally shy away from subbed shows and movies (mostly due to my laziness), but this movie looked good enough that I decided I would endure the subs. Needless to say I am extremely happy I decided to take the time and watch Wangan Midnight The Movie. This live action adaptation to the anime resonates very much with that of Initial D (which I also loved). Wangan took a different approach which made for an excellent story. The entire movie was based around a main character who wanted a 1970 Nissan S30Z (or 300Z for those who don't know Japanese car models). The Z that he found at a wrecker was the same Z that a boy who died racing it prior had owned and coincidently they share the same name.
The whole movie is predicated around the idea of fate and this haunted car. The character and story development was very well done and kept me wanting to watch more. I liked how this film didn't glorify the whole street racing scene like Fast and the Furious did. The film made real the fact that people can and do get hurt and even die racing. As a person who loves cars, it was nice to see for a change the characters who own these amazing machines show respect and appreciation for them.
I was impressed enough with the movie that I am planning to watch the series (subbed) in the near future. I definitely recommend this film for any car enthusiast. You won't be disappointed. Stay tuned for my review on the Wangan Midnight anime.
While this was very well put together, there was several things that could have been improved upon. The story itself was wandering a little. The obvious main focus was the Devil Z legend. Yet it wandered off to side stories which would have been ok had they not been half done.
ReplyDeleteThe most useless story of all had to be his school attendance and not one but two teachers being involved. The female teacher was kind of interesting in the way she looked at things, but that story never was finished at all.
The sister of the dead brother was never sorted out or her relationship with the other drivers.
The pop star and her problem with her love and racing and her career. Ultimately that storyline was utterly pointless as was her photographer. It seems everyone races.
From a driving side they always up shift the moment they enter a race. They do it from their cruise speed, which means unless they were high reving in cruise then theyare dropping the revs low on the upshift which will give them slow acceleration.
Overall I liked the movie a lot, but it was good when it could have been great by staying just a little more on focus.
I also noticed that everyone was driving fairly expensive cars. It was a little far fetched to expect that everyone who had been encountered in the movie had these pristine expensive performance vehicles.
ReplyDeleteAs for the up-shifting, I would venture to guess that the whole purpose for doing that was because the majority of people are lazy and drive automatic now. The whole concept of down-shifting to high rev the engine then shifting back up to maximize the throttle output is a little beyond most people who would be watching this movie.
In fact, the only movie I can think of where the drivers shifted down from their cruising gear when racing then shifted back up was in Initial D. Although this is comparing apples and oranges as we are looking at the difference between HP runs and handling runs.
Despite all of this, I still liked this movie and I will be watching the anime series to see how the two stack up to each other.