I feel rather bewildered after reading some of the comments on this board. They all seem rather positive towards this film whereas throughout watching all I could think of was how awful it actually was.
First of all, I felt the ronin-come anime character Kazamatsuri was of particularly poor casting. Tomoyasu Hotei may be a famous singer and guitarist in Japan, but that doesn't make him an ideal role as lead antagonist. first of all, his mannerisms and overall presence on screen was so far beyond anything we have come to expect from samurai behaviour that it comes off looking more like an anime character than a serious master swordsman. Besides his innate ugliness, he commands no presence on screen, certainly not comparable to the great Toshiro Mifune and any comparison is an insult to Mifune's genius. This is even more evident when he comes up against aging samurai Mizoguchi who has his act down perfectly. The good vs the bad here of the characters is mirrored in the actors' performance, screen presence and overall commanding of the samurai behaviour.
Many have also noted the shooting style of director Hiroyuki Nakano. While its obvious in parts he has tried to emulate Kurosawa in style, and in few cases does so very well, too often do we see his true understanding (or lack thereof) of the cinematic artform. His style comes off more like a University graduate than a Japanese professional. The black and white, while understood in its use, is again not used to its fullest as the film was shot in colour and simply desaturated in post. This loses the clarity that black and white film usually allows, leaving us with footage that has all the disadvantages of colour and none of the advantages of black and white.
Lastly, I have to mention the appalling soundtrack. I'm all for putting a fresh spin on an old genre, but this eighties heavy rock simply does not fit. It seems that people are too obsessed with having the music achieve something not done before in samurai films that they don't pay attention to whether or not it is any good.
While it may be perceived that I did not get what the film makers were trying to achieve, I think that is wrong. I understand the need to try and breath new life into an aging genre, but I think that this is not that man to do so, and that this is certainly not the method of going about it. While the film wants to be a comedy in many areas, it also tries very hard to have serious undertones and comes off not knowing which is the most important to the film.
If this is the samurai genre for the MTV generation then I want no part of it. Twilight Samurai is a much better representation of modern samurai storytelling and I think that should be the direction film makers should be taking the genre. Leave the MTV generation Battle Royale and let true samurai fans have quality like Twilight. This amateurish movie isn't needed here.
First of all, I felt the ronin-come anime character Kazamatsuri was of particularly poor casting. Tomoyasu Hotei may be a famous singer and guitarist in Japan, but that doesn't make him an ideal role as lead antagonist. first of all, his mannerisms and overall presence on screen was so far beyond anything we have come to expect from samurai behaviour that it comes off looking more like an anime character than a serious master swordsman. Besides his innate ugliness, he commands no presence on screen, certainly not comparable to the great Toshiro Mifune and any comparison is an insult to Mifune's genius. This is even more evident when he comes up against aging samurai Mizoguchi who has his act down perfectly. The good vs the bad here of the characters is mirrored in the actors' performance, screen presence and overall commanding of the samurai behaviour.
Many have also noted the shooting style of director Hiroyuki Nakano. While its obvious in parts he has tried to emulate Kurosawa in style, and in few cases does so very well, too often do we see his true understanding (or lack thereof) of the cinematic artform. His style comes off more like a University graduate than a Japanese professional. The black and white, while understood in its use, is again not used to its fullest as the film was shot in colour and simply desaturated in post. This loses the clarity that black and white film usually allows, leaving us with footage that has all the disadvantages of colour and none of the advantages of black and white.
Lastly, I have to mention the appalling soundtrack. I'm all for putting a fresh spin on an old genre, but this eighties heavy rock simply does not fit. It seems that people are too obsessed with having the music achieve something not done before in samurai films that they don't pay attention to whether or not it is any good.
While it may be perceived that I did not get what the film makers were trying to achieve, I think that is wrong. I understand the need to try and breath new life into an aging genre, but I think that this is not that man to do so, and that this is certainly not the method of going about it. While the film wants to be a comedy in many areas, it also tries very hard to have serious undertones and comes off not knowing which is the most important to the film.
If this is the samurai genre for the MTV generation then I want no part of it. Twilight Samurai is a much better representation of modern samurai storytelling and I think that should be the direction film makers should be taking the genre. Leave the MTV generation Battle Royale and let true samurai fans have quality like Twilight. This amateurish movie isn't needed here.