Samurai Rebellion

Monday, June 23, 2008

I can imagine a dude checking this movie out because of its title, expecting a badass action movie, but finding out that it's really a slow paced drama with a little action at the end. The original title of this one was Rebellion, but I believe distributors changed the title to make it sound more like an action/adventure picture. Which is a shame.

I knew what to expect. I Netflixed this one because I heard it was great, and because I'm loving Toshiro Mifune and wanted to see him in something that wasn't directed by Kurosawa. And also I'm starting to dig samurai films, and I've been watching a lot of Japanese films in general lately.

Strangely enough, I liked the slow buildup a lot more than I liked the more fast paced, action-y final 20 or 30 minutes. I sorta expected the opposite. I thought it had a fairly interesting story (sort of about the politics or governance of Japan in the Edo Period, and how certain events come in the conflict with the values of one family), some pretty b&w photography, a nice visual style (I'm a sucker for those slow zooms or pans towards a character's face as they start to boil under the surface) and good performances. But it fell apart for me when everything comes to a head at the end, especially the final scene, which dragged and didn't have much emotional impact for me.
There are some ideas I like, especially the final duel between two guys who don't particularly want to kill each other, but it all felt flat to me. The emotions don't come across... I guess I was more interested in seeing how this power structure worked than I was in the characters.

So I can give it a thumbs up overall, but I was disappointed and didn't love it like I thought I might.

Seperate thought: I'm trying to figure out what this newfound appeal of samurai movies is to me. I dig action/adventure movies, that's a given, so maybe it's just a desire to branch out in a new direction in that genre? That's probably part of it, but I think I also respect this idea of heroes with a strong moral code, following a belief system. And then, it pretty much always turns out that the system/society is fucked up, and the hero samurai has to rebel or make a stand in order to do the right thing. Or even in something like Seven Samurai, the samurai don't rebel, but the movie is ultimately a criticism of the society they live in. So there's a moral code, but also a strong message of individualism in these movies. Perhaps these messages resonate with me?