From frame one, it's clear that SANSHIRO SUGATA II is pure propaganda: the sound splashing of the arrogant American (a boxer who picks on poor, defenseless rickshaw drivers) is about as subtle as a knee to the groin. The detachment with which this movie is directed is truly mind-boggling: there's absolutely no room whatsoever for any kind of balanced assessment of it as anything BUT propaganda. As someone who learned to box by watching and then emulating the likes of Muhammad Ali and Roberto Duran (I would bust my hands up working out on a duffle bag filled with cinderblocks and old clothes, then walk down the street carrying two pair of boxing gloves in a neighborhood notorious for gang fights), I took exception to the portrayal of the fistfighter(s) in this movie. (Though, to be fair, I also took exception to Paul Newman's performance in SOMEBODY UP THERE LIKES ME and Sylvester Stallone's ROCKY sequels.) To this very day, judoka and karateka have had a hard time of it in full contact martial arts while "strikers" (i.e.; cage fighters who primarily use their fists, more often than not after training under boxing coaches) or grapplers (wrestlers or jujitsu players) have fared better. In SANSHIRO SUGATA II, Fujita manages to defeat the Western boxer- referred to as "the greatest boxer in the world"- with a single throw. One throw, and the guy's finished... Not in the Real World. One can't help but recall the way the leaders of the Boxer Rebellion prepared their Faithful for their assault on the bastions of the West- by firing blanks at them to reassure them that the Western weapons wouldn't give them a moment's pause... So much for propaganda. That's not to say that there's nothing of value here: there are some genuinely funny moments (Fujita falling asleep while meditating, only to awaken and find his sensei still upright but also asleep and his exit from his dojo, as he pauses every few feet to look back at his ever-bowing lady love, etc.) and the series of dissolves showing his rickshaw driver from the opening sequence as he evolves into a hardened judoka and the two crazy karateka and and... There's more, of course (this being, after all, an Akira Kurosawa movie, with all that that entails), but the heavy-handed politics get in the way of the storytelling. Kurosawa dealt effectively with politics in other films, but only when the grip wasn't so tight.
Review of Sanshiro Sugata, Part Two
