ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Ariella Broughton It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Ella-May O'Brien Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Matho The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

Anssi Vartiainen It's the end of the 21st century and humanity is losing a war against invading alien force. A time machine is their only remaining hope, but things take a turn for the worse when the original traveller dies and a young girl is sent instead.As you can see, the film doesn't exactly shine with originality. It's your basic time-travelling fish out of the water storyline, this time with a Japanese setting. But even there it fails because it more closely resembles an urban gangster movie, and not a very good one at that. Sure there's the aliens, but they're not in the movie very much and are your run down the mill basic Roswell aliens.Not to say that the film is godawful. Some of the action scenes have a bit of flash to them and the two main characters are enjoyable, especially Milly (Anne Suzuki), who's delightfully capable and resourceful for an early turn of the century action heroine.Still, the fact remains that Returner has perilously little to show for itself. It's not original, it's not particularly well executed and you really don't get much out of it. There are worse movies out there, certainly, but it's not a movie worth looking for.

Vincent This is a well directed and acted film but the fact that it doesn't even attempt to be original makes it hard to like.The acting from the two leads is very good they are convincing and interesting to watch. Kaneshiro plays the stylish clichéd "super assassin" with aplomb and Suzuki is convincing as a slightly paranoid punky girl. Kishitani over acts entertainingly as the evil villain and is interesting to watch whenever he is on screen.The style and effects are excellent with some great set pieces and neat special effects running at a reasonable pace although hard edge of the seat stuff.The problem is that there is not a single original thought in this film. The main plot is obviously taken from Terminator but that is only the start with bits from The Matrix, E.T. and Transformers being the most obvious inserts but there are other films used liberally.This is more a homage to American sci-fi films than a film in its own right and although the few humorous touches are well timed and delivered the film would have been better if it had been play more for laughs.Its watchable if you have nothing else to do but I certainly wouldn't seek it out.

mats_carcass Ingredients:2 Parts E.T. 1 Part The Terminator 1 Part Indepedance Day Rind of The Matrix pretty much every action movie clichéTake all these ingredients into an editing suite, wait for several months, and when released... AVOID!!Yes as many know this movie pretty much rips off several action and pop culture films. What makes it worse is the fact that when the bland action subsides, and they try to engage the audience with some form of plot, it fails miserably. Many times i was bored with Takeshi and Anna's wooden, by the numbers performances; several times i checked how such was left to go. And even when i thought i had reached the end, it kept going, and going, and going. It gets a 2 purely for the fact it is Asia ripping off Western cinema (at least in theme) for once, instead of the opposite. Too bad it didn't prove that Asia does it better...

genrebusters Take: 1 parts Terminator 1 parts E.T. 1 parts Independence Day A dash of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within Put all parts in a Japanese animated blender set on Matrix mode, mix thoroughly and poor into the hippest cup you can find. Sit back, kick your feet up, and enjoy your refreshing Returner. Almost all movies take bits and pieces of other movies and mold themselves into something that appears new and different. After all, there really are no new stories to tell just different ways to tell the same story (thank you Joseph Campbell for showing me this!). Most movies are able to easily hide their influences. Some movies however, wear their influences on their sleeves. And then there is Takashi Yamazaki's Returner. A film that not only wears its influences on its sleeves, but also on its head, hat, jacket, body, pants, feet and shoes. Its as if Yamazaki took all the things that he thought were cool about all the cool movies he liked, and threw them together to make something that was his own. Although sometimes the final product is a bit rough, the stitches do show through this Frankenstein monster, all in all the final product is extremely enjoyable and an exciting thing to behold. Takashi Kaneshiro plays Miyamoto, a hound dog of a semi-Yakuza gangster who speaks softly and carries a large gun. While out on some kind of Yakuza "business", against his arch-rival Mizoguchi, who years ago was responsible for kidnapping Miyamoto's child hood friend and selling his bodily organs, Miyamoto's life is forever changed. Milly, played by Anne Suzuki, is a time traveling Japanese cutie that materializes amidst the Yakuza shoot out. She gets wounded, gets saved by Miyamoto and thus the two are thrown together to stop an alien invasion. Milly was sent back in time, a hundred years or so, to destroy a single alien who landed on Earth. She thinks this alien is a scout of sorts that is going to send for his planet's army to destroy the Earth. A few plot twists here and there, as well as few action scenes later, we learn the truth of this alien visitor and I can safely say the ride was quite enjoyable. The reason this movies works is that it doesn't try to hide its influences: it shoves them down the audience's throat. And when you're ripping off movies, it's at least a good idea to rip off movies that are exciting, action packed, visually stimulating and enjoyable. So now for the checklist of rip-offing: 1. Matrix style visual effects: Lets face it folks, the Matrix movies have pretty much tainted and jaded the way we see action movies now. At least they have done so to me. I want bullet time; wire-fu, sci-fi-kung-fu and I want it in spades. Returner handles this with a bit of great creativity. Milly has a device on her wrist which when charged up allows the wearer to enter into a few moments of bullet time. This gives way to some very cool action scenes, one in particular which just so happens to be the coolest gun reloading scene ever filmed, even beating out the great one in Equilibrium2. The time traveling warrior who goes back in time to stop a disaster which will happen in the future, a la Terminator 2. 3. Video game styled, and inspired visual effects that include a war torn earth, transforming jets, space ships and aliens - perhaps the movie that Final Fantasy should have been! 4. An alien that looks like the head pilots of ID4, but is really just a cuddly little misunderstood Muppet - in other words, E.T. If you are looking for something original, groundbreaking, thought provoking or mature, stay far away from Returner, as a matter of fact, don't even look at the DVD cover (Neo wants his trench coat and shades back!). However, if you are looking for a movie that is fun, action packed, hip and able to keep up with multiple viewings you really can't go wrong. And after all is said and done, as long as a movie is entertaining, and makes you forget about the humdrum of daily life for two hours, then isn't it worth the price of admission? I for one would have been happy paying twice what I paid!