Casshern is one of a very small category of movies I call “experimental epics,” where a groundbreaking look-and-feel is combined with an engaging story to produce something totally new: part science fiction, part retro-futurism, part mystic fantasy and part family epic. It could have been a mere exercise in effects technology, but it has a fearless passion to it, a heedless excess that makes it transcend its pulp-fantasy roots and its occasional heavy-handedness. The real source of the film’s inspiration is the mid-Seventies anime Robot Hunter Casshan, but the film bares only the vaguest possible resemblance to the original story. A slavishly faithful remake would scarcely have been worth bothering with. Instead, the movie takes some of the core conceits, surrounds them with an all-new setting and and allows them to take on an unexpected gravity.