Black Butler [Kuroshitsuji] *** (2014, Hiro Mizushima, Ayame Gôriki, Yûka) – Movie Review

Directors Kentarô Ohtani and Kei’ichi Sato‘s live-action version of Yana Toboso‘s beloved manga series (first published in 2006) is an enjoyable success, with plenty of bursts of exciting action and a strange and compelling story to tell.

In the near future, a Demon’s Curse killer is killing diplomats by a mummification process. The Queen chooses an young orphaned aristocrat, Kiyoharu (Ayame Gôriki), to investigate, with the help of her butler Sebastian Michealis(Hiro Mizushima), an all-powerful, androgynous demon who plans to take Kiyoharu’s soul. Kiyoharu is a girl called Shiori pretending to be a boy to find her parents’ killers and have vengeance.

From the get-go when Sebastian takes on a whole warehouse full of gangsters with just a butter knife, the jokily violent tone is established. It’s a risky route to go, maybe, but it works nicely here. The trick to making it work, of course, is that it has to be amusing as well as exciting and Black Butler is both. It’s campy good fun.

Mizushima, who dieted for four months to drop his weight down to 110lbs and took action training, is a striking presence, surprisingly commanding and effective for such a waif-like, girly-looking, smirking man. The other three successes among the characters are all female, Kiyoharu/Shiori (also attractively androgynous), the clumsy housemaid Lynn (Mizuki Yamamoto) and Kiyoharu’s guardian, the cackling villainess, wicked Auntie Hanae (Yûka). These last two are played for OTT giggles and get them.

The involved plot may be tricky to follow but it’s carefully and lovingly organised and the tastily quirky movie has a dynamism that carries it engagingly and entertainingly through its two hours’ running time, which doesn’t seem a bit long. It’s a Warner Bros Japan production. Hopefully we’ll get a chance to see more of them worldwide.

The film changes the setting of the original manga series from 19th-century London to an unnamed Eastern nation in the year 2020. According to producer Shinjo Matsuhashi, they changed the setting to Asia because, otherwise, they could not cast Japanese actors.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Movie Review

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