User reviews

Modeled loosely on the 1998, anime movie... I Wasn't very keen on the original, went on to find this movie to be pretty uninteresting, as a big anime fan I watched this assuming the ratings would be incorrect. However, this movie didn't really grip me..

There seemed to be far too many characters of different nationalities for a country which is post apocalyptic.

I didn't really feel anything for the characters, and the story seemed to jump from one section to the next with noting much substantial in between.

The best thing about this movie is that it has very little or no CGI oh, and that it stars Samuel L Jackson.

Each is different though, watch it for yourself, I'm sure if you are just into action movies you may find it appealing...

As the saying goes, not many surprises to be found here, but still a somewhat decent low budget effort. Formula is well known and with an added gravitas such as Samuel L. Jackson, you give the movie some weight (it's not like he can help all the flaws this has, but he's always mesmerizing to watch).

The other actors are mixed bunch. The action (choreography) though is pretty good. Always taking into account what movie that is. There is also a lot of blood and drug use fyi, though I'm sure you can read that in the rating explanation too. There are not many shades of gray character wise, you do get them in color scheme of the picture though. For some it might be a bit too dark of course.

This was a very mediocre film that did almost nothing right. Nothing really worked well in this movie besides the decent gory action that was choreographed well. The plot was dull and the protagonist was hard to root for. Also the movie was very ugly and it made it hard to watch. Even Samuel Jackson couldn't save this dumpster fire and you can tell the budget mainly went to hiring him. The acting and dialogue were also very poor. It's also hard to believe this was based on a Anime and you could tell they butchered the story and left so much out that fans wouldn't recognize it. Pass on this one.

terrible. i love anime. seen the original many times and this is just an insult. i have no clue what blackmail they used to get Sam Jackson to play in this movie but it is just a terrible movie. I am going to watch the anime again to wash away this sin. Did the director even watch the original? I just hope Yasuomi Umetsu doesn't see this. i feel this is just a total insult to the legend. i guess it is my fault for being so eager and having high hopes that this movie was going to be spectacular BUT i really should have seen who did the screen play and director before i held my breath. for the avid anime fans like myself: steer clear from this title.

So disappointing bad acting, weak plot, poor action scenes. To be honest this was one of the worst films I have seen in a long time. 3 of went to watch and all 3 of us agreed to leave about 30 min into the movie. Normally I give movies a chance to develop, but this one just got worse. Normally anything with Samuel Jackson, is an immediate thumbs up. Not sure what went wrong, but I just didn't believe him when he was on screen. Sewa the main character is supposed to be this tortured orphan set out for revenge, but there was nothing about her that made me care for her cause. I was really disappointed. Sorry Mr Jackson, but I will say save your money, I wouldn't even watch this if it was free on TV.

Kite is a film which is quite gory and violent for the sake of shock value but it adds very little. The story of this film has been done many times before and has been done better. Nothing is new here and the plot feels rushed. Lack of overall interest. Lack of suspense and thrills. And lack of intriguing characters.

By the time the predictable twist arrives in the end, we don't exactly care. Samuel L. Jackson must have done this film as a favor to the director (originally was directed by David R. Ellis who passed away prior to completing the film- directed Jackson in Snakes on a Plane. So there's a connection there).

Overall this film isn't worthwhile, and those top 7/8 star reviews are not believable. Kite is simply a mess of a film (whether you are familiar with the anime source material or not), and would be best to avoid.

To say this is the worst movie ever is a stretch. To say its one of the 10 worst movies ever is more accurate. From beginning to end this movie is horrible. Generic plot, horrendous acting, poor character development, poor transitions, etc. The sub plots do little to carry the movie along as well. The thread that ties in the sub plots throughout the film can be cut with a crumpled up piece of toilet tissue. Everything that makes a movie bad, this film has it. Even the presence of powerhouse Samuel L. couldn't elevate this atrocity from theatrical hell. I wish I could un-watch this mistake of a movie. I feel obligated to petition legislators to make a law for it to be illegal for any and all production of this crap to continue.......

Formulaic, poorly scripted with some dodgy action and worse accents. For a 90 minute movie it drags. Annoyingly the sound is all over the place so remote nearby if you do decide to deprive yourself of 90 mins of useful life.

Never read the original so unable to comment on authenticity, but viewing it as a movie for the first time. Very few moving parts, must have had a limited budget for some derelict properties, some spray paint, rubbish and a couple of moving vehicles. There seems to be a penchant for sticking things up people's noses. Difficult to write a review of 600 words when there is very little to say about this movie.

Reviews on this seem to range between worst ever and careful analysis of the movie compared to real live. Hello? It is an action movie, with futuristic elements to boot. Also, most reviewers have suspiciously only reviewed 1 or 2 movies and an IMDb account for several weeks or months. I call those reviews in doubt.

Is it a great movie. No. But neither are most movies by Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stalone and basically anything by Michael Bay. And still, most of you watch it. Quite frankly I rather watch this than yet another Die Hard franchise movie or something out of the Expandable series which is basically recycling for has-been actors.

So what DO we have here. Just a nice action movie, manga remake such as Aeon Flux or Ultra Violet, while the style is more reminiscent of Leon or Banlieu 13 (both by Luc Besson), but without the quality of either of the latter. Just a nice movie on a Saturday night or a rainy day with friends watching a cute naive girl kicking the crap out of some guys. Don't analyze the characters or the story, as you wouldn't with the majority of these kinds of movies, and you'll be OK.

This film is really poor.

The main actress, India Eisley, is completely mis-cast for an action role. She looks like she couldn't slap her way out of a girlie fight in a nightclub toilet, let alone take on any of the vicious nasties that she encounters in the film. Her pout screams "spoilt brat" and is more akin to a young lady that didn't get the right manicure for her poodle somewhere on Sunset Boulevard than any sort of supposedly drug- dependent action heroine (sic).

What on earth was Sam Jackson thinking when he joined the cast? I guess they all get it wrong from time, and thankfully for him, his role is fairly small - I wonder how many people would have passed this film by had his name not been on the billing? He was on decent, if not epic, form in his limited role.

The action scenes are poor, the fight scenes are excruciatingly slow and very obviously staged (badly) and none of the actors look convincing doing or saying anything. Even the bad guys come across as being somewhat weak and pathetic - shouldn't actors thrive on playing a really mean villain in a film? The villains don't seem to have any menace at all.

Chuck in some beaty music that is meant to make some of the basic Parkour based scenes look dramatic with a few wisps of smoke thrown in for added "drama", and you've got a recipe for disappointment. 4.3 is a somewhat generous score - I wished I hadn't wasted 90 minutes of my life watching this utter tat.

If You Like the Films of Luc Besson, the Kick-Ass Movies, Girls With Guns and Comic-Book Style Ultra-Violence than This One's for You. Very Colorful Template and Some Rousing Action Makes this a B-Movie Worth a Watch.

Incredibly Cute Young Heroine with Wigs, Make-Up, and Wardrobe Straight Out of Japanese Anime. This is a Dark Tale of Flesh Peddling, Drug Inducement, and Survival Among the Worst of Humanity.

Flashy with a Club and Dub Soundtrack this Makes for Some Sleazy Entertainment for the Pulp Minded and has Enough to Offer Grindhouse Fans and Cult Movie Enthusiasts. It Rarely Disappoints and Delivers the Goods.

Underrated Low-Budget Kicker that is Exploitive Entertainment Extraordinaire. It's Slick, and is Better than its Reputation.

Seeing a 4.3 rating on IMDb, I did expect that something must be wrong with Kite, but found it to be an overall good movie.

Story, Acting, Camera and Setting are without major flaws, and within the genre the story is quite believable and has no obvious holes.

The ending even holds some surprises, and there are a number of memorable scenes.

So why the low rating? My theory is that there are a number of factors:

• The mainstream audience may have a problem with the soundtrack which can be annoying if are not at least a little into dubstep (I found it a prefect fit for this movie)

• To purists the characters may be not cool enough; they are too vulnerable, too human and fail too often be bad-ass uberheroes

• The mainstream may find the setting too dark, while purist may not like the brightening elements in the story

It might have been a masterpiece if the film makers would not have tried to please the mainstream. It almost seems as if there was a struggle between those forces who wanted to appeal to a wide audience and those who wanted to go to the extreme. The mixed result seems to keep many people unsatisfied, although I regard it as well above average.

I can recommend to watch it and make up your own mind. I believe that "Kite" will be more appreciated over time and find its audience.

If you like highly immoral sexual themes, bad sound design and mixing and less logic than "The Purge Anarchy." You'll love this. I really don't have much more to say about it. It wasn't really well thought out. That being said: Visually pretty cool.

There was some really nice shots and the picture overall definitely didn't conform to "the norm" which I always commend.

Overall it could have used way more love. It felt like no-one actually enjoyed the making of this film or put any real effort into it. They had a main girl character which you could say is great- But it was so typically taken advantage of. It's like the film makers just wanted to turn her into a marketing strategy for sex. She had no character, she wasn't a powerful person. There was SO much space to turn her into a really memorable character.

I wouldn't recommend this film to anyone, but i guess there is a market for it.

The film itself as you probably know is based on a brilliant anime film revenge story. The anime is way better. The thing that also griped me is you simply cannot make a x-rated film with sex, gore, torture scenes into a pg-13 film. It doesn't work.

There is nothing here. nothing of value. the action scenes were awful. the editing was terrible. the story was useless. i don't really know how this movie got released. (1 viewing, 3/14/2021)

The movie was okay. It fell short because I am used to movies having depth, each character has a back story and are relatable in thier roles. Also each scene gripping you into the movie so you forget its a movie. This movie follows the new trend were if you are sitting in a movie theater texting and constantly checking facebook with no attention span then this is perfect for you.

Could have gone places with this to bad.

Visually they have created the dark world. Futuristic yet chaos full world. Not so bad not really good. A one time watchable for pass your time or you need an action movie. Art director, VFX artists, lighting .... The technical team did a wonderful job. Visually it was really good. The mood, camera everything just make us feel like we are in that world. The underworld vibe was there. Anyway I skipped lot, not because the movie was bad because I think I was not in a mood for the action. But giving this movie a chance was not a bad idea. The performance was good by everyone. But still it's not for everyone. Even if you like action movies, this one may not be your taste. So my opinion is give a chance and kill it kind of movie.

This is again one example of how a failure/new director takes their own story and change the movie title for some japanese anime/movie even realizing that does not make any sense with the original plot, and of course do this for the sake of views; more people paying to see what this is all about, more income. Same happens to dragon ball evolution and other movies like Ghost in the Shell.

Shady hollywood strategies

anyway, the movie does not make any sense with the original story, KITE is a revenge movie.

I wasn't expecting too much from this film. A cartoonish, stylish, over the top pseudo science fiction with lots of action and violence were in the mix for my bag of expectations for that kind of films. I kind of got all those in the bag and some more.

The direction was nothing revolutionary but stylistically nice and well paced. The acting was decent. The twists were not that unexpected for an experienced viewer but enough to keep an average viewer guessing till the end. I really don't understand the reviewers lately. I think some of them are trying to promote or demote some certain films. I realize there's some kind of common pattern in some one star and ten star reviews and frankly don't trust them anymore.

Well my real rating may be around 6 and a half to seven stars out of ten but honestly I gave 8 to compensate those false one star ratings. When you read some of them you think either those people have never watched those kind of films before and don't know what to expect or they are flat out dishonest.

If you want a decent pseudo sci-fi action film with a young heroine than you may want to give this film a chance.

The story is based on a Japanese manga/anime that I intend to see momentarily. Without seeing it, though, I can hardly compare it with the film, so my review is for the movie as a standalone.

The first feeling I got when I started watching the movie is that it must be a Luc Besson film. It felt the same way: international cast, a very young female killer and the dreary violence that is usually met in European films. I am still amazed that it is a US/Mexico production.

The acting was also particular. I wouldn't call it bad, just different. India Eisley is incredibly cute, but she is playing this kid killer who wants to avenge her parents. She is an addict for a drug that erases the memory, so she doesn't even remember the parents in the name of which she exacts revenge. She is not a perfect killing machine, instead she is always close to death and only luck and sometimes a mysterious boy are keeping her alive in several occasions.

The world is somewhat similar to the first Mad Max movie, only not a desert, but what is left after "the banks fell and the governments collapsed". Slightly more appropriate for the times than an post apocalyptic world or one caused by shortages of oil.

Overall I enjoyed watching it. The action scenes felt very real, and even if the girl had fighting skills, most of the time it was just about surviving or running away and she got her ass handed to her more than once. No fancy wire-fu, no huge explosions, no rain of bullets. The twist at the end was pretty obvious, I practically waited for it since the beginning of the film, and the boy's character was full with inconsistencies, yet these were not enough to make me regret watching.

Bottom line: the imperfections of the film, the way it is always slightly off recipe, made it worth watching. It is not a masterpiece, but certainly one of the (re)new wave of film making, where actors and directors are starting experimenting again and expressing artistic vision. More of this, please! And India... she's only 21, but she looks like jail bait. The contrast of her childish beauty to her character was another great asset of this movie.

I guess it is based on the censored version...however not being an Anime fan I really couldn't tell you what the difference between the two are, I've seen neither, but that word "censor" is probably where it started to go wrong.

"Censored" and "artistic vision" never really seem to get along well.

Maybe the distaste was that, out the door, we were watching the edited for syndicate television version of "Pulp Fiction."

Or maybe that it seemed to be style of substance and the style part of it only lasted a few minutes.

In any case, it was a bad movie and a boring one. But, it had Samuel Jackson in it, and, well, I'll sit through horrible movies just because he's in it.

You know you're watching a bad movie when you immediately dislike it after 5 minutes and then in hope of the movie improving it doesn't after 20 minutes. Then when you have lost all hope that this movie will improve you immediately turn off the movie. Kite is one of those movies that has the dishonour of being one of those bad movies that I have pressed stop after 20 minutes. Yes, this movie was so bad I could not go a minute further.

Kite seemed like Kick-Ass (2010) meets Mad Max (1979). This movie is unpleasantly and unappealingly violent and the action scenes were also very poor and unexciting.

Apart from the little known cast, what on earth was Samuel L. Jackson doing in such a rubbish movie?! Looks like he needed a bit of extra money to pay the bills and to keep up his work ethic.

Unless this type of movie appeals to you, don't bother.

1/10.

An R rated Kite is a bit like making a PG rated Robocop. The original is a Hentai -- that's pretty much the only reason it even existed is to be Porn.

There is no deeper meaning, the original is a graphically explicit "story" about an underage girl's sexual abuse by a pair of serial rapist cops. The presence of a "story" or even a SETTING is window dressing.

You remove that from the movie, and there's nothing left because everything else in the original was an EXCUSE to fill the rest of the time.

What's next, a PG rated version of Urotsukidōji? A G rated version of Akira?

Ghost in the Shell starring ScarJo? Oh...