Twilight Samurai (2002)

[Drunk Monk]

Ok, so the version of this that I saw was translated into Mandarin without subtitles and my Mandarin isn't that good, not by a long shot. There's a lot of talking in this film. Only two fights. I had to keep guessing as to what was going on, because it's all very deep and there's lots of character development. In the end, I think I got it, or at least enough of it to make sense.

Twilight Samurai had a limited release in the U.S. and got rave reviews. It is a beautiful film. Every shot is postcard perfect. There was a sense of realism about how the Samurai might have actually lived, doing desk jobs, working in their yards, day-to-day crap that we can all identify with. The lead, Hirayuki Sanada (who is also the lead in THE PROMISE, see <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/ezine/article.php?article=659">http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/ezine/a ... rticle=659</a><!-- m -->) turns in a complex performance. Personally, I thought he was too neurotic. When he does show his sword skills, he's a total ass kicker, and I'd be cocky as all hell if I had those kind of skills.

Which leads us to the fight scenes. Well, there's only two, plus a short scene of Sanada practicing. In the practice sequence, you can see that Sanada has mad kendo skills. He's fast, precise and his cuts are well practiced. It's just a tease of a scene though. There's a great fight right after the practice scene where Sanada uses a short stick to own an infuriated sword-wielding samurai. After that scene, which was tightly choreographed, filmed in a single shot, I stuck it through to the final fight. The final fight sucked. It was mostly in the dark or behind screens and such, so most of the action is implied. And there's a lot of talking. Way too much talking.

Like I said, critics were raving about this film, and it's very well crafted. Some were hailing it as a leader in the new wave Samurai films, or Chanbara, that is taking place in Japan (although I have yet to be that impressed by anything new yet). Without the precious dialogue, I couldn't really get into this. What can I say? I like a good samurai film, but this one needed more sword fights. Sanada has the skills for great fights and the director handled the midfilm fight excellently, but the finale...argh, the finale. Why is it so hard to get good finale fght scenes anymore? Drop the ball there, and it's over.

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

Spoken in Japanese? Translated to Mandarin. Lot's of talking. Two fight scenes, only one of which is good.

Well my Mandarin is far short of yours, DM, so I think you should just lift the fight scene and send it to us.

[cranefly]

Halfway through your review, I was already preparing to post about so many martial arts films screwing up the finale. It turns out that's where you were headed.

It's a puzzler. I mean, in storytelling, endings are tough. You have to satisfy the reader's expectations (whether through action or cerebral means) and tie up all the loose ends and make it all mean something (resolution).

But for a martial arts film, it's a lot easier. Many don't even bother with a resolution (how many movies have I seen that end with a freeze-frame of the good guy delivering the death blow to the villain?).

There's some simple guidelines for a great final fight. It should have the most at stake (intense emotions, perhaps large bodycount), should be the flashiest (the best martial artists pulling out their best moves), and should have the best fight choreography (please, don't switch to special effects to compensate).

There's other stuff, of course. But even those simple basics get violated time and again.

I recall House of Flying Daggers. Worth watching, I suppose. But what a collapse near the end. All the characters started doing reprehensible things, showing cowardice or betrayal or incomprehensible coldness (disregard for a loved one). It could have been a great movie. But by the end, all the emotion was gone. I didn't like anyone.

As for the final fight scene... How odd. I can't even remember if there was one. That is never a good sign.

[Drunk Monk]

Twilight Samurai is actually a classic chanbara. It just drops the ball when it comes to the finale fight, so if you go to see a chanbara flick for the swordfights, you'll be sorely disappointed. If you want artsy camerawork, actors with long pregnant glances ala Jane Austen, you'll like this. Strange as it may seem, the unrequited love theme is huge with chanbara films. Recall the Musashi/Otsu love story in the Samurai Trilogy - wow, could you milk a relationship of missed opportunites anymore than that? I mean it dragged over three freakin' full length movies...

I agree with CF about the concept of tension in the finale fight. It's all about that finale or lack thereof. That's what cripples Jet Li's upcoming Fearless. You can make montages of just fights (and I've seen one of Jackie Chan fights) but it grows strangely tiresome out of context. That's why films like Tom Yum Goong (see http://brotherhoodofdoom.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=173) fail ultimately. They just didn't balance the story.

The crying shame of Twilight is that it was totally set up for a great finale fight. The tension was there. The actor had the talent. For some insane reason, the director chose to set it in a dark house where you could see anything.

And for the record, Twilight was originally in Japanese, of course. It's just the version I saw that was in Mandarin. A friend of mine who has an extensive asian cinema collection lent this to me, but most of his titles he acquired in Chinatown, so it's some pretty funky platform stuff. Plus he speaks Mandarin, Cantonese and English, so it's no problem for him. I'm always willing to give a film a go in another language, even without subtitles. Often it makes it more fun for me. I just gotta get one of those cheap Asian all platform DVD players so I can unlock more ...