Blood: The Last Vampire

See my film review published at DCist today:

Out of Frame: Bloody Last Vampire, July 10

As demonstrated by so many remakes, often it is best to let a film remain in its genre or language of origin. Blood: The Last Vampire was apparently a pretty good, if somewhat short, manga film about a human-vampire half-breed who turns against her evil kind while working for a secret agency. Action flick director Chris Nahon, who made Kiss of the Dragon with Jet Li and the marginally better L'empire des loups, could not leave well enough alone and has made it into a live-action film. (Nahon reportedly replaced Hong Kong-born director Ronny Yu when the French independent studio Pathé took responsibility for co-production.) Screenwriter Chris Chow, who has also worked as an assistant cameraman, helped adapt the anime storyline created by Kenji Kamiyama from the comic book characters of Katsuya Terada. Manga fans will surely enjoy seeing a cult favorite come to life, as will anyone who has ever wondered if a film could satisfy an Asian school-uniform fetish and a love of martial arts violence at the same time. Everyone else, even those like me obsessed with vampire flicks, is advised to wait for DVD.