After a two-minute “previously on Gantz” type of intro, something one may construe as action goes down in Gantz II: Perfect Answer. It’s too little, too late, however, and followed by even more slog, until an ungodly walking running time of two hours and 21 minutes is reached. The whole of Japan should know better.
It’s a damned shame, given how frenetic the first film was a mere one year before. I suspect both Gantz chapters — birthed from a presumably never-ending manga, it bears mentioning — were shot back-to-back, as the original film ended in a cliffhanger. In hindsight, I’d rather have my questions of what would happen go unanswered, if the imperfect Perfect Answer is the lame response.
Although I give returning director Shinsuke Sato immense credit for not doing the same thing twice, I found myself pining for at least the mission-after-mission, go-get-this-goon structure to stick its head into the proceedings. In its place is a plot twist that the big, black ball called Gantz has up and changed the rules of his own game, thus pitting the black leather-costumed “contestants” against one another. Never underestimate the love of a human heart to fracture a team.
A couple of zippy sequences exist, primarily a mowdown-cum-showdown amid a crowded, speeding subway train. But the finale is sappy; the rogue’s gallery of aliens, missing; the electric charge sent down your cinematic spine, startlingly weak. So underwhelming and disappointing is this immediate follow-up, the experience is like licking the top of an old 9-volt battery to see if it has any sign of life left. —Rod Lott