Sin: The Movie

Pretty good action and violence. Story is interesting and they manage to make you care about these characters, even though it's a short OVA. Premise for plot os almost typical of some cyberpunk animes, although I don't think I would consider this one. Villians are well drawn and not the generic type found in Devil May Cry or Guyver. Animation and sound are big movie type quality. Rewatchability is good too due to good action and short run time. You can find it cheap and easy on dvd.

Oh boy, this is a strange one.

SiN is a 1998 video game set in the year 2037, the police has been fazed out and private companies and muscle fulfil the role of law enforcement. You play as John R Blade, head of security company HardCorps, and the story follows you going after Elexis Sinclaire, head of SinTek, as she appears to be behind the violent mutants encountered throughout the game.

I'm not going to go into the video games any further, as the movie isn't so much a sequel to them as it is an adaptation, but its worth reading the plot summary for the games ... to understand the characters and themes in the movie better.

The movie is hardly a masterpiece. It's unnecessarily dark and gritty in contrast to the source, and it starts by immediately killing off a supporting character from the video game, which you only see through flashback sequences as it opens with Blade standing at their grave. The story, while not difficult to follow, is pretty weak. It jumps around a lot and the supporting characters are pretty forgettable, and its full of clichés too. The antagonist is once again Elexis Sinclaire, and her plan revolves around kidnapping and extracting the blood from a little girl with a rare DNA anomaly in order to make more powerful mutants. Groundbreaking stuff I know. Other characters include the afformentioned late video game character's sister, whom none of the cast have met prior, and a few other forgettable faces who were original from the movie too.

What the movie lacks in writing however, it picks up in art and setting. The action and characters (mainly Blade) are beautifully over the top, and the gore is spectacular. It also looks like a brilliantly designed dystopian future, something the preceeding games failed to achieve, and it has that classic 90's futuristic art direction to it aswell. The soundtrack is pretty decent, the opening credits theme is awesome, but it's mainly pretty generic action sci-fi music that gets the job done nicely. If the music were bad, I'd have something to say about it.

The movie is pretty enjoyable even if its not all that good, it's a movie that holds nothing back and is equal parts ridiculous and awesome. Its definitely worth a watch, which won't take you long as it doesn't even hit the 60 minute mark, credits included. If you're a fan of over the top action, great fight and gore scenes, and can live with some lackluster writing, this movie is for you. It's a great entry to an obscure franchise (which is also worth checking out if you're a fan of first person shooters) and a damn good movie spawned from a video game that just couldn't beat Half Life.

I'm not going to waste any time with this review. If you are thinking of watching this movie, don't. It might be free on multiple video streaming sites but you won't be able to replace the wasted hour of your life. You might think that I'm overreacting but I can't think of any worse way to spend your time. The movie is based on some 90's shooter that I'd never heard of. Since Sin: The Movie is based on a video game, it's not a big surprise that the plot is totally weak. It had something to do with people getting turned into zombie-mutants and ... then the protagonists had to storm the antagonist's base to save some girl. It's the kind of thing you'd expect to see in a Saturday morning kids' cartoon. In fact, I might recommend it for young boys if it weren't for all the graphic violence. I generally don't have a problem with violence (considering I'm a big Fist of the North Star fan) but this would have made a decent kids' show if it wasn't for all the gore. You may not be convinced that this show is TOTALLY bad. Not until I tell you how atrocious the animation is. I know Sin was made about a decade ago so they were still working out the kinks of digital animation but that doesn't change the fact that this movie looks really bad. The term "limited animation" was created for this cartoon. There are even shots that are pixelated. I summed things up best at the beginning of this review; this is just a bad cartoon, don't even waste your time on it.