Crazy Samurai

[Drunk Monk]

For those of you who cannot read Japanese, the tag line is "400 vs. 1 IN A SINGLE TAKE"

Now this is a sword fight I gotta see.

Working on it. Been tracking this one since March of last year.

Screener unlocked (which is why I'm posting it in Movies because in the covidaze, screeners count)

HO

LY

CATS!

This film is literally one long sword fight. 8 mins in, the title card rolls and it's on. 77 minutes of sword fight. That is the entire movie, plus a little epilogue fight at the end. And it's a solid one-er. There are a few points where they might have laid some stitches, but very few. 

It is insane. As a film, well, you can't just like swordfights. You gotta love them. Either that, or you gotta be into cinematography. This is a technical masterpiece. Storywise, well, I just told you the story. 400 swordsmen try to kill Musashi. There really is no story. It's sword fight porn - 77 mins of it. 

The choreo is amazing because of its endurance. How the hell did they choreo all that? My suspicion is that they set up certain sequences but a lot was improv. I dunno. It's a helluva lot of moves to remember, even though many moves are repeated. I gotta bow down to Tak Sakaguchi, who delivers masterfully as Musashi. His sense of distance and timing are remarkable. To the uninitiated, the fight choreo may seem simple, exacerbated by the repetitions, but there's some sense of feints and such that made it work for me. But mostly, it's the stamina. Tak just keeps going. It's crazy.

Someday I hope Ivor and I can sit down with a bottle of Suntory and watch this together. 

Do I have to say swordfights again? Yeah. More swordfights than any other film I've seen. Ever. 

DOOM recommended.