Samurai 1

I watched the movie Samurai 1 the other day, as I was watching the sequel, cleverly named Samurai 2 I decided I would review it here. Samurai 1 is the tale of Musashi Miyamoto, a Japanese folk hero. I read the book attributed to Musashi "The Book of Five Rings" in it he claims to have killed over a hundred different people in duels and fights and is believed to be the best swordsman who ever lived.  Of course when you are dealing with a historical figure and folk hero, who happens to be the best fencer to ever live, it is not exactly hard to come up with an interesting movie, add to the mix that Toshiro Mifune one of the best samurai-actors of all time stars in the lead role and you have a recipe for a masterpiece.

Obviously you can see where I am going with this, the film is great.  If you are a fan of stylistic elements of films like Afro Samurai, Kill Bill or the pulp samurai adventures characterized in movies like Shogun Assasin in the 70's you may be a little disappointed because this movie is a character driven narrative, focusing on the growth of Musashi from headstrong outlaw to upstanding retainer.  Also the highly stylized fighting we see in martial arts movies today is lacking with the few fights in the movie consisting of people slashing wildly in a mad free for all.  The fights seem like true struggles in this movie, they may not be meticulously choreographed or full of stylish flourishes however they do have their own legitimate sense of realism. The score to the film is great as well. It gives the movie an epic type of feel and actually brings to mind the often cited similarity between Samurai films, and the American Western film. 


There are a few problems with this film. I do take a little issue with the fact that the majority of his maturing and growth takes place in the 3 seconds it takes "3 years later" to flash across the screen towards the end of the movie. Also some of the shots are painfully dim, making it difficult to tell who is who or what is going on.
These problems aside, the film is a wonderful work of art and a window into midievel Japan and one of Japan's greatest historical figures.