Watch K-20: The Fiend with Twenty Faces For Free

So much average

Admirable film.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

I bought K-20 without knowing it was a Japanese movie but it didn't keep me from watching it since I already own a few Japanese movies. However this film turned out to be very fun and enjoyable with well done special effects, awesome stunt work and a plot that manages to hold your interest from start to finish.Although the film does feel a tad long sometimes it's still a fun watch. The characters are all likable and do eventually grow on you thus encouraging you to watch on.Overall, it's a fun and enjoyable superhero movie from Japan highly recommended if your are a fan of Japanese films.

Firstly, I love the way Tesla is honored in this movie. He gets too little credit for what he has done for our modern society, no thanks to Thomas Edison.The story is, in my honest opinion, fairly simple. If you are a regular Japanese eiga fan, you would have realized who the villain is from the very beginning.The CG in this movie is fair and not particularly impressive, but the movie uses it only as a secondary element. The only one I thought interesting was the way the faces/mask are removed.The acting was as good as Japanese movies get. Most of the actors leading the movie are veterans after all. Only regret is that Matsu Takako didn't get enough screen time for being one of the pivotal characters.I found myself comparing this movie to V for Vendetta. Alas, the similarities are quite striking in more than a few places. You can think of this as the making of the new titular hero.

There's no stopping Takeshi Kaneshiro in charming the socks off everyone, especially since new fans were won over by his heartfelt performance as the Grim Reaper in Accuracy of Death last year, and following that with his Zhuge Liang in Red Cliff. This year in Singapore, he marquees a big budgeted action-mystery masked vigilante movie, and while his powers and abilities to hark back to the Batmans and Spidermans, K-20 turned out to be rather entertaining for its liberal use of special effects, comedy and some fantastic action sequences, set against at alternate Japanese universe.Which is interesting because other than the unmistakable Tower, Tokyo now known as Teito, is quite unrecognizable, and plaguing the country is a huge class and income divide between the aristocrats, and everyone else, which reads the Poor and have nots. It's set after WWII which never happened since Japan signed a peace treaty with the US and the UK, and hence what we have is some strangely futuristic backdrop, and some peculiar background on everyone being conditioned for pre-determined jobs and not having the ability to switch careers. Doesn't make a difference actually to the story, but gives you the feeling that everything is centrally planned.While the title points to K-20, the fiend with 20 faces, the story's actually focused on Heikichi Endo (Kaneshiro) as a poor circus acrobat. And if Bat-fans would see some similarities here, I'd say his character's more like Dick Grayson and with putting his abilities to fighting crime, it's almost exactly how a Nightwing would behave. But back to Japan, Heikichi gets set up by K-20 himself, and gets framed into allowing everyone to believe he's actually the masked villain himself. Breaking out of prison thanks to a merry bunch of thieves whom he soon allies himself with, Heikichi makes it his quest to flush out K-20 and to clear his name, with the help of a nifty grappling hook and rope device.Not being sexist here, but I was pleasantly surprised to learn that K-20 is directed by a female - Shimako Sato, who also adapted the screenplay from a novel by So Kitamura. It's a fresh perspective having to watch an action movie directed by a female at the helm, and the focus here was of course on the characters. We have Takako Matsu as the Duchess Yoko Hashiba, who isn't your standard fare damsel-in-distress, and Toru Nakamura as the police inspector Akechi Kogoro, the arch-enemy of and resident expert on K-20.It's a classic action mystery which like The Prestige has Russian scientist Teslar providing the object of tussle, a device capable of harnessing and transmitting vast electrical power across locations without the use of cables. K-20 wants it to rule the world, and it's up to our heroes to crack the mystery as to where the device is, and to stop the villain from achieving his goal. The plot's fairly simple, which includes an origin story for Heikichi including the antics of a hero in training, but what made it palatable was the excellent delivery by the cast, together with gorgeous sets and edge-of-your-seat action. A key element here too is the identity of K-20, having nobody actually seen the villain in the flesh except for Heikichi himself.The story however does sag a little when it lingers on the more dramatic moments, and you'd know for sure when Kaneshiro gets replaced by stuntmen for most of the action shots not on closeup. But as far as big-budgeted movies like these go, K-20: Legend of the Mask still came across as pretty entertaining and all primed for sequels and a franchise should the box office prove to be successful.

K-20 was the most fun I had in a movie theater in a long time. Yes, there are deeper movies, and definitely more expensive ones, especially on this side of the ocean. But K-20 kicks Spiderman's butt (or any other recent costumed hero movie) any day of the week. Special effects are there, but this is first of all a movie about people.Set in an alternate 1949, where Word War II never happened, K-20 takes place in a poorer Japan, that bears many signs of the alliance with the Reich. The sets are very well done, imagine a steampunk Blade Runner mixed with post-Dickens, post-Industrial revolution London. This is Teito, the capital of Japan, where orphans roams the streets and the Imperial aristocracy rules with fear and armed men. One ruthless vigilante roams the streets (well, perhaps the roofs): K-20, who in spite of his professed Robin Hoodism is less than loved by the population, who'd rather root for his arch-enemy, the aristocrat Inspector Akechi. Yet K-20 is not the main character here: the hero is Heikichi Endo, who is framed for the crimes of K-20, beaten and imprisoned. How he will be able to escape, clear his name (and save the world, in passing) keeps you glued to your seat for the over two hours and fifteen minutes of the movie.The retro atmosphere reminded me a little of Chabon's Kavalier & Clay, if a movie could ever do it justice. Parkour lovers will definitely enjoy the antics of the hero in training. Everyone else, manga fan or not, will have fun.