As popular as this film is, we have to be honest about our opinion of it. Although you may not read a single other bad review of "Crying Freeman" anywhere on Earth, you're about to read one right here. In our opinion, this is one of the worst films in our entire catalog, and we cannot in good conscience encourage you to buy this film before any number of thousands of others.

The story is based on an anime, though you would not know it to watch this film. The central character, Yo (played by the effeminate Mark Dacascos), is "the ultimate assassin"--he never misses. He is the sole hitman for a centuries-old Chinese society called Sons Of The Dragons (pretty original, eh?). He always eliminates his target, and afterwards, sheds a single tear for them. As we struggled through this rubbish, we found ourselves shedding tears as well...

One day, during one of his hits, Yo realizes that there was a witness to his crime. The witness, a pretentious two-dimensional dumb-blonde character named Emu (and yes, she has the intelligence of the ridiculous, ostrich-like bird of the same name), is up in the mountains painting when she sees the murder. Yo approaches her with the intent to eliminate her and tie up loose ends, but he--?--instantly falls in love with her instead and wimps out, fleeing the scene. There's 1400 years of training for ya'.

Unlike every other human on Earth, Emu--instead of being terrified and traumatized by witnessing this brutal murder--instantly falls in love with Yo and, after he flees, cannot get him out of her mind. She awaits his inevitable return with bated breath, anxious to see him again even though she knows it will be for the occasion of her own murder. That makes sense...

Well, as luck would have it, Yo does pay her a nighttime visit soon thereafter with the intent to eliminate her. But after he's near her, their pathetic little infatuation flares up again; and the world's most deadly and ruthless assassin instantly degenerates into the world's most chumpy and ruthlessly impotent ass again. Of course, they screw.

Now things REALLY get going downhill. After the act, the two nauseating lovebirds are interrupted by some mean men with machine guns. That's nothing new, but what is new is Yo's little...outfit. You see, after he gets out of bed, it is revealed that he is totally naked except for a--no joke--buttless thong. He then proceeds to scale a wall--in his thong--and attack the would-be killers--in his thong. Now, correct us if we're missing something here, but how is it exactly that we're supposed to take a thong-wearing, teary-eyed, chumpy, effeminate assassin seriously? All this guy needs is a cowboy hat and some chaps, or maybe a bowtie, and he's ready to take the gold at the next Male Stripper Special Olympics. The "buttless cowboy thong" scene, as we've come to call it, definitely sealed this movie's fate for us.

Thongs and effeminate prancing assassins aside, there are plenty of other reasons to dislike this movie. One such reason that springs instantly to mind is Rae Dawn Chong. Some of you may remember her from a huge string of crappy movies during the '80s, and others of you may remember her from a huge string of crappy movies during the 90s; but chances are most of you will remember her from an unprecedented run of crappy acting that started with her first performance in 1974 and is still going strong. This androgynous halfwit bogs down any project she touches, and her Detective Forge character in this film is as painful a display of her distinctive "junior high school talent show" acting style as any she's ever attempted. However, to her credit, she blends in nicely with the god-awful, direct-to-video ensemble cast and their two-dimensional-ignoramus police officer characters.

To be completely honest here, we didn't finish the film. Perhaps it's not fair of us to judge it so harshly based on the first half alone. But then again, it wasn't exactly fair of this film to suck so violently--or to spring its buttless cowboy thong ambush on us--and without warning, either. Let's just put it this way: the only thing that could physically have made this film any worse--aside from possibly Jan Michael Vincent playing the assassin--would have been Jan Michael Vincent playing Rae Dawn Chong.