I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

This movie is a very entertaining mixture of "Die Hard", "Cliffhanger", "The Fugitive" and "The great silence" with a little touch of Asian culture, a very emotional background and a couple of smart little twists in the ending.Even though this movie copies from some of the mentioned originals and hasn't the usual uniqueness and creativity of the Asian cinema, this flick is high paced and entertaining as well as addicting from the beginning to the end so that it should please to any fan of action thrillers. I must admit that I prefer this professional and energetic Japanese movie to the endless follow ups of many of the more and more repetitive and faceless originals or trendy remakes. Even more conservative fans of solid suspense movies should adore this movie that takes some bits and pieces from the best examples to fusion it to an own explosive movie.The three best elements of the movie are first of all the stunning Japanese winter landscapes, the great development of the credible main characters from a mourning coward to a responsible saviour and the high paced, surprising and in the end very emotional closing scenes.If you happen to like the mentioned movies, make sure to check this one out as it is one of the best of its kind from the last decade and worth to be purchased.

Efficient 'terrorists take over a building' thriller from Japan.The building in this case is the largest dam in Japan, high in the mountains. A terrorist group seize control of the facility, threatening to open the dam and flood the surrounding countryside if they aren't given a suitably huge wedge of cash.The spanner in the works is Togashi (Yuji Oda), an earnest employee who finds himself hip deep in randomly coiffured baddies.Yes, there are big slabs of 'Cliffhanger' and 'Die Hard' here, and the flick outstays it's welcome by at least twenty minutes. However, this is a good solid thriller, buoyed in no small part by Togashi being an everyman rather than a typical action hero. He thinks on his feet and dispatches the terrorists in some neat ways, but at no point devolves into a dead-panning stereotype. In fact, his actions are in recompense for being unable to save the life of his best friend during a mountaintop snowstorm, several months previous. His friend's fiancé Chiaki (Nanako Matsushima) is visiting the dam and becomes one of the hostages, and she firmly believes Togashi will simply escape rather than help them. But Togashi has a debt to pay to his friend, and he'll do whatever it takes to save Chiaki! Oda is a believable and spirited hero, and Matsushima a lovely and talented actress. The chief villain, mad haired and wheelchair-bound, is also good fun. The secondary characters, especially the cops, overact to a ridiculous degree, so much so that their scenes are almost comical. If this was deliberate, I didn't get what they were referencing or paying homage to.The Ocean Shores DVD offers good, if unspectacular picture quality, and subtitles that are mostly fine.

And in Japanese. The narrative structure is the same as the Bruce Willis movie, right down to the terrorist's duplicitous motive, the presence of a girlfriend within the dam, and an unhelpful outside police force. It's an entertaining movie, with some excellent action sequences involving snow, tunnels full of water, and enough thrills to satisfy action fans.

Rumor has it that if they ever got around to making a Cliffhanger 2 it was going to take place at a dam. Suffice it to say, the idea obviously had some merit and the Japanese film industry has turned out a fine effort. When terrorists seize control of the largest dam in all of Japan, a controller at the dam is forced to become an unwillingly hero. It is not for the sake of his fellow workers held hostage or his dead friend's fiancee who happens to be visiting that he does this, but rather for the dam itself. The action is so-so, but this guy is also an expert mountain climber so it allows the action to move outdoors and create some interesting situations. Overall, the film was something different and I would recommend it if you like action cinema from another source.