Someone needs to give Sean Michael Argo some money, because clearly he has some interesting ideas jumping around his head. While I give him the credit for putting his ideas to screen, it's hard to give him too much credit due bare bones results.
Much like a couple other movies I have seen with him, namely Ember Days and The Cleric, Binary Samurai takes on a lot of the weird and distinct tropes he has peppered in his films. This time around he takes a stab at cyberpunk, which is interesting considering the world he built is distinct and detailed. In an alternate 1999, the internet shut down. Millions were still "jacked in" and thus their minds were lost to the digital realm and left on hard drives called nodes. These nodes are worshipped by Otaku, people devoted to technology who hide from the general populace. Samurai walk the earth killing Otaku and ronin along the way as our two leads serve an evil hacker named Demogogue. They quickly discover there is a digital entity hiding in the digital realm known as the Kami of Wires. Needless to say, that is the end of it.
Truthfully, we get little insight into what the Kami of Wires is meant to represent. Maybe a messianic figure? I don't know, it was never quite explained. The story overall is pretty vague, and overall it's hard to gauge what is really going on. I suppose one of the bad guys is a robot? Overall, the film looks pretty good for a micro-budget production, mixing in elements of Neuromancer and Snow Crash with movies like Hardware and Cyborg. So how could all of this fail?
Besides some wonky sound design, it's the weird interpretive dance. I felt like I was watching a how to video about tai chi, and it happens a lot. This whole idea was utilized as a way to differentiate the real world with the digital, and in some ways it is interesting. But it just kept going on and on, and ultimately it got silly when two characters got into a "fight."
There are elements in this story that would make an interesting movie, and the scenery and sets Argo used and created are top notch. But it falls short and ends up as another deep cut on free streaming services.
Much like a couple other movies I have seen with him, namely Ember Days and The Cleric, Binary Samurai takes on a lot of the weird and distinct tropes he has peppered in his films. This time around he takes a stab at cyberpunk, which is interesting considering the world he built is distinct and detailed. In an alternate 1999, the internet shut down. Millions were still "jacked in" and thus their minds were lost to the digital realm and left on hard drives called nodes. These nodes are worshipped by Otaku, people devoted to technology who hide from the general populace. Samurai walk the earth killing Otaku and ronin along the way as our two leads serve an evil hacker named Demogogue. They quickly discover there is a digital entity hiding in the digital realm known as the Kami of Wires. Needless to say, that is the end of it.
Truthfully, we get little insight into what the Kami of Wires is meant to represent. Maybe a messianic figure? I don't know, it was never quite explained. The story overall is pretty vague, and overall it's hard to gauge what is really going on. I suppose one of the bad guys is a robot? Overall, the film looks pretty good for a micro-budget production, mixing in elements of Neuromancer and Snow Crash with movies like Hardware and Cyborg. So how could all of this fail?
Besides some wonky sound design, it's the weird interpretive dance. I felt like I was watching a how to video about tai chi, and it happens a lot. This whole idea was utilized as a way to differentiate the real world with the digital, and in some ways it is interesting. But it just kept going on and on, and ultimately it got silly when two characters got into a "fight."
There are elements in this story that would make an interesting movie, and the scenery and sets Argo used and created are top notch. But it falls short and ends up as another deep cut on free streaming services.
