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| Koji Yakusho trades his dancing shoes for Katana blade... awesome |
Any film that opens with a hara kiri (if you don't know, don't ask), goes to the great shrine of perfect cinema in my book. Throw in a battle of 13 vs 200 Samurai, and any attempt at an objective critique is plain silly. But I naturally incline to the silly, so here it is anyway.
Suffice it to say I liked it. A lot. Of course because of the above, and of course because I am a Samurai, but Miike 'Beat' Takashi succeeds for other reasons too. The principle being, the salute/bow and throwback he pays to Kurosawa in constructing this film. The homages are everywhere from its story setup, character types, composition, social commentary and epic finale. The realism and authenticity in style, also assists this film in being a lot more emotionally tangible for its audience, where counterpart films overindulged in CGI often lose out.
Was cool to see Koji Yakusho, most famous for his endearing lead role in Shall We Dansu, as he was perfect as the lead Samurai Shinzaemon, in the film's story that leads him too take out the evil Lord Naritsugu.
So why not a perfect 5?... Well we saw the International version, which was apparently 25 mins shorter than the Japanese release which I felt maybe left some storylines/characters underdeveloped, and there was one bit of CG used that I didn't like (1 of only 2 times I noticed any at all). That being said it was easily the best contemporary Samurai film I've seen in years, and can't wait for the eventual Nippon release on BluRay.
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