« The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie on DVD, 5/12/05 | Main | The River on DVD, 5/15/05 »
May 16, 2005
Samurai Assassin on DVD, 5/13/05
Well, this is strange one. They've got Toshiro Mifune recycling all his Kurosawa samurai roles in one character and inserted him into a real historical incident. While the swordplay is excellent and Mifune acts his part particularly well, there's some big problems here. Mifune is far too old for the role. His motivations would make more sense if he looked 20 years younger. So much time is devoted to explaining the situation here, but it still makes very little sense to someone who knows only a minimum of Japanese history. It's based on the assassination of the shogun's regent at one of the gates in Tokyo. A group of samurai bent on restoring the emperor to power is responsible, but they want to find out who's been betraying their group to the secret police. Kurosawa is accused at first. They're wrong, of course. I'm sure this was made to win whatever the Japanese Oscar is. Hope Kurosawa got his Oscar. Hope this movie didn't.
Posted by deaconmf at May 16, 2005 11:42 AM
Comments
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)