Sin - The Movie

Ah, the video game adaptation. Is there any bigger bastion of B-grade, poorly contrived, exploitative, and just plain bad cinema? OK, yes, Tomb Raider was an exception – certainly one gem in the rough, but when I consider all the video game adaptations I’ve ever seen, all I see is a litany of my most horrific movie experiences. It was with trepidation, therefore, that I popped Sin - The Movie into my trusty DVD player.

Produced by well-respected American anime publishing company ADV, Sin - The Movie represents their first foray into the creation of domestic (American) anime. Purchasing the rights to the first-person shoot-em up Sin from US game developer Ritual Entertainment, ADV commissioned Japan-based Phoenix Entertainment to create ‘an American anime for an American audience’. While I applaud their efforts, the results can only be described as disappointing.

In the twilight of our century, the mega-city of Freeport has been hit by a spree of murders and kidnappings, seemingly perpetrated by a band of super-human mutants. In desperation, the mayor of Freeport turns to his crack para-military unit the ‘HardCorps’ (gag) and it’s leader Colonel John Blade (cringe) - a giant nubian cyborg with cool sunglasses, long dreadlocks and a sizeable chip on his shoulder – to eliminate this mutant threat once and for all.

After one of his friends and colleagues is ripped apart by one of said mutants, things become very personal for Blade; even more so with the revelation that the death of his father may also be related to the crimes. Increasingly, evidence points to the involvement of Freeport mega-corporation SinTEK, whose founder, Elixis Sinclaire - a beautiful and scantily clad, yet thoroughly evil (they all are aren’t they?) biochemist - seems to be manufacturing the mutants as some kind of military überweapon. Joined by the buxom Jaime Armak, a Lieutenant in the Universal Army (gag) and sister of his fallen comrade, Blade defies orders and prepares to storm the SimTEK stronghold. Using a special batch of mutant–killing bullets that he procures from the local mafia, Blade and Jaime’s breasts smash their way into SimTEK and blow away everything in sight. Oh, and the three of them may well rescue the latest kidnapping victim while they are there...

I must say that the first half of this 60-minute film is actually quite intriguing. There’s murder, mayhem, big guns, not to mention wall-to-wall action film and anime clichés, and I was really starting to get into the story and the characters. However at the halfway point things suddenly go bad. Very bad. The second half of the film, the storming of the SimTEK stronghold, is pathetic – re-enacting what I can only assume to be the original gameplay of Sin. The result is 25 minutes of utterly predictable and utterly boring rubbish. With his special mutant-killing bullets, the mutants offer little resistance to Blade and when he reaches the last level and kills the ‘boss’ monster you know that it’s all over - and it is. The only thing missing is Blade’s score displayed top-right, and maybe if they had left this in, just maybe, I could have given a shit. Sadly ADV have utterly wasted what was an enjoyable lead-in to a feature-length anime film.

In terms of animation quality, the story is very similar to that of the plot; starting strongly but declining sharply at the half-way mark into a variable, at times amateurish, mess. Whilst the production features reasonable character designs - a muscly cybernetic hero and a busty, visually appealing heroine that are drawn in quite a realistic style – the character animation itself is variable. At times character movement is noticeably choppy; a problem also exhibited by some of the film’s horizontal pans. Vehicle animation, whilst impressive in the opening scenes, is quickly reduced to ridiculously bad, flat-looking attempts at compositing (layering of foreground and background elements) as the HardCorps helicopter heads towards SinTEK. The terrible compositing is complimented by some laughable visual effects, with the helicopter’s ‘ghost-mode’ the cheesiest effect I’ve ever seen in anime - ever.

One of the most defining characteristics of the character animation is a startling amount of blood and gore. With Urotsukidoji reportedly the main inspiration for the visual look of Sin, and I can believe it, it’s a little too much for me.

The production also makes some attempts at incorporating CGI effects into the visuals, and whilst in some scenes the mix of 3D and 2D elements is performed flawlessly, others are spectacularly bad. In some cases Sin switches from standard hand-drawn shots to fully rendered 3D images, and these awkward transitions serve only to increase the cheese factor and lend it an amateurish air.

In terms of the digital transfer itself, Madman are again at the top of their game, with an almost flawless transition to DVD. The full-frame image, whilst interlaced (the PAL master being drawn from a lower frame-rate source), is sharp and clean without introducing undue aliasing. Although visually the images are quite dark – it seems to be perpetually night in Freeport - what colours we see are vivid and strong. With the production literally raining blood, the image is too often soaked in bright, full reds. There are no signs of chroma noise or other forms of foreground pixelation, and macro-blocking - a feature of many anime transfers - is missing from backgrounds. All in all, pretty impressive; yet again Madman have shown their ability with the technology and the genre.

When anime productions are dubbed for an English audience, anime distributors will often do a subtle script rewrite to Westernise the dialogue. Often this dub is terrible, ignoring crucial subplots and ‘spicing up’ the original Japanese dialogue. When producing Sin - The Movie, ADV went one step further, or is it one step back? At the time of conception, ADV produced two completely different scripts for its US and Japanese releases. Utilising the same footage, whilst these two scripts ultimately end up at the same conclusion, the thread that each of them traces and the one or two subplots that they generate are radically different. And with the English version being the primary script, Sin - The Movie is at least unique in one interesting respect – the English version is actually more compelling than the Japanese!

However, as interesting an approach as this is to take, the problem of course is that in supporting two different takes on proceedings, ADV have fatally confined the dramatic possibilities of each! Anyway, I suggest you judge for yourself; Madman have included both versions of Sin in their region 4 release for you to compare.

The issue of the scripts aside, it is in the audio department that Sin - The Movie exhibits its highest, and more importantly consistent, production values. Both the English and Japanese soundtracks are two channel Dolby Digital mixes that sound pretty reasonable through a Prologic decoder. Whilst the mix of each is predominantly forward – with dialogue emanating clearly and distinctly from the centre channel – the surround channel is utilised to carry the odd ambient effect such as wind and rain. Additionally, the surround channel is utilised to carry a significant proportion of Masamichi Amano’s wonderfully dramatic score, played beautifully by the Warsaw Philharmonic. The result is an immersive soundstage that, whilst lacking any real channel separation, fills the room nicely. There’s also a good deal of low-end activity, what with the plethora of explosions called upon in the plot, and the subwoofer is kept very busy indeed. All in all, Sin - The Movie features a great soundtrack that is typical of larger budget anime OAVs.

Madman have supplied a small number of extras that are fairly typical of their anime releases.

• Trailer: (2mins 8 sec) Full-frame and of a quality matching that of the feature itself, it’s composed of rapid-fire cuts set to the pumping techno theme. More exciting than the movie itself.

• Photo Gallery: Six production sketches for the futuristic vehicle designs seen in the film. Of no real value.

• Character Profiles: A little of the backstory for each of the six main characters is presented. Only mildly interesting.

• ADV Trailers: For the Samurai X OAVs, Bubblegum Crisis 2040, Neon Genesis Evangelion and the much anticipated Spriggan. All non-anamorphic, with reasonable transfers.

Sadly, Sin - The Movie isn't the hard-boiled anime thriller that ADV wishes it was. Although initially entertaining, it quickly degenerates into the kind of schlock that I've come to expect from video game adaptations. But hey, if Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter II are amongst your favourite films, you might just love it! Overall, Sin - The Movie may be of mild interest to anime fans, but in this humble reviewer's opinion, isn't worthy of a second viewing.