Taiketsu (2007)

Directed by: Sven Knüppel | 105 minutes | action, drama, science fiction | Actors: Fabian Monasterios, Cécile Decker, Justus Beckmann, Jens Ristedt, Liane Siems, Sarah Diener, Yuri Beckers, Johanna Malsch, Mirko Thiele, Stephan Schreck, Tayfun Baydar, Jacob Weigert, Wolfgang Riehm, Frank Sauer, Christian Hinrichs, Henrick Winkler, Henning Stich, Michael Wanker, Frank Schubert

What happens when you’re barely on a budget, but you still want to make a sci-fi spectacle film? Then you get ‘Taiketsu’ (2007), a film that is a cross between ‘Snatch’ (2000) and TV soap “The Bold and the Beautiful” with a thick layer of post-apocalyptic digital animation. And is it what?

Let’s start with the digital animation; for a 2007 film, the computer work is at least ten years out of date, it looks downright lousy. Director Knüppel tries to hide this a bit by bleaching almost all colors from the image and increasing the contrast considerably so that hardly any detail remains. The result is a dirty image with lots of black and explosive white with some faded images in between. Admittedly it fits the post-apocalyptic atmosphere, but it is not really nice to watch.

According to the producers ‘Taiketsu’ was inspired by ‘The Fifth Element’ (1997) and ‘Akira’ (1988), but in terms of story ‘Taiketsu’ mainly borrowed from the Japanese manga “Battle Angel Alita” of which the film adaptation is still available. waiting for James Cameron to finish his ‘Avatar’ movies. There is an upper world with an elite of a new species and an underworld where the filth of the earth has to survive among the rubble and out of the hands of illegal organ traders. And violent sports are played in which the players are patched up with limbs from the black market.

The story requires a large number of characters who are all involved in some nefarious scheme and eventually all cross paths, sort of like in Guy Ritchie’s ‘Snatch’, including the discontinued image at the introduction of a new character along with the name and a description of the person. With the latter ‘Taiketsu’ tries to come across as hip, but goes too far, by introducing every character in this way, the fun quickly disappears. In addition, after ten minutes we no longer know who is who: too many actors from the same group of friends of the same age group. And add the poor image quality to that.

For the camera work, “Law and Order” has been carefully considered as the image shoots angular from left to right with dramatic zooms when confronted with something seemingly staggering. Due to a lack of decor, the actors are all acting close to each other, for example a simple construction site must serve as a far-reaching nuclear wasteland. As a result, ‘Taiketsu’ also resembles a soap opera where two people are constantly conversing with each other in a room. Like a soap opera, it revolves around love, betrayal, adultery and all kinds of intrigue; in short: it has to be heated in such a scene, but just like in “The Bold and the Beautiful” it is more laughable than compelling.

And laughable ‘Taiketsu’ is certainly due to the curious English overdub that apparently belongs to the original German production and that is not synchronized. They are Germans who overdub themselves with an American accent, except for some texts that are spoken in German. Not coincidentally, “Battle Angel Alita” contains many German terms and here it is exactly the other way around. There must be a German-Japanese relationship in this area…

You could call ‘Taiketsu’ a valiant attempt at blending a myriad of genres into a kind of cyberpunk experience where nothing is out of the ordinary and anything goes, but that’s what makes up for the rotten image, amateur acting, failed CGI, and mushy incoherence. story that comes to nothing is too decisive. The low point of the film is when director Knüppel models a scene with a prisoner and a bald guy with “questionable methods” after the famous scene with Marlon Brando and Martin Sheen from ‘Apolcalypse Now’ (1979).

The film talks about a legend in which the one who drops from the highest point of the upper world lands safely and all his wishes will come true. In the case of the film itself, however, that is not the case: director Knüppel took ‘Taiketsu’ too high and then went on a rant.