Azumi is a martial arts historical fantasy film based on a manga comic that first appeared in 1994. It is the tale of a young girl, Azumi, who is trained from childhood to be an assassin, but not just any assassin. She and her friends are being trained to prevent war, the idea being that any warlord who threatens the fragile peace will get assassinated by one of the team and tranquility will prevail in the province.

Azumi isn't like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, it is much more realistic and bloody. Yes it does have the incredible acrobatics and the same implausible swordfights that CTHD had but it doesn't go to the extremes of wire-fu (fights and acrobatics using wires to fly about) that CTHD did.

Blood flows, people die with one stroke and life is cheap to those who are strong. The feel of Azumi is one of real feudal Japan, like it might actually have been like albeit without the fantastical elements of the superhuman like protagonists, but then of course what sort of fantasy martial arts film would this be without a little bit of artistic licence thrown in?

Azumi begins with the young girl being found abandoned by a river and proceeds to fly very rapidly through her and her friends training so that we can get to the meat of the story swiftly.
Once this set up is completed we find out what their first mission is. It seems as if the authorities have uncovered a plot by three warlords that will inevitably set the province on a path to war and possibly lead the country into hostilities.
Their sensei/master tells his students that their job is to assassinate these three men for the sake of the country and its people. They must plan their attacks carefully as the men will be heavily guarded but he informs them that their training has made them the equal of any personal bodyguard, let alone the rank and file soldier protecting their targets.
Full of confidence the group head of to kill their first target...

Azumi is very comic flavoured, or very action movie orientated. The assassins are supreme warriors and cut down the bog standard warrior like wheat in a field. This makes for some fabulous fight choreography as they attack dozens of bodyguards, mowing down any who are foolish enough to try and fight them, as they make there way towards their target. After their years of training they are the best of the best... or so they think!

I am not a great fan of this genre of film, I would much rather watch a modern day cop thriller from Asia than a historical one like this. In fact I put off watching this for ages because of that feeling. What a mistake that was... Azumi benefits from having everything a really good film needs. A charismatic lead who is perfect in the role, a great story punctuated by action and character driven scenes, some truly stunning multi person fights where you try and watch all the heroes at one time, some gorgeous scenery and a director, Ryuhei Kitamura (director of the manic gangster/zombie/martial arts movie 'Versus') who can handle the whole mix perfectly.
Azumi was a revelation to me, so much so that no sooner had I watched it than I wanted to watch the sequel immediately after seeing this one. It is one of those films, like CTHD, than can bring in and entertain an audience that would normally avoid this type of movie. Sadly it is unlikely to do that without the romantic overtones that CTHD had that pulled in the more mainstream audience.

Azumi isn't perfect, it does have a few minor faults and things that annoyed me, things I cannot tell you unfortunately as it would ruin some of the story for you, and some of the minor characters are wasted a little bit, though that is probably due to having to trim stuff from the original manga storyline to fit it into a reasonable film length.
Even with the couple of small problems though I would recommend Azumi to anyone who likes this kind of genre, Asian films in general and, for that matter, good films in general.

DVD extras:

On the version I borrowed of my friend, or rather was forcibly lent to me, the extras were:-

Fighting On The Edge: A making of featurette, ok but like most of these things it didn't really interest me.
Battle On The Wild Side: A featurette about the struggle to actually bring the manga to the big screen, which is actually very interesting for a featurette!
Trailers: Trailers and TV spots, interesting to watch if only to see what they consider the way to advertise the film.