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Rating: 7 stars

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Japan samurai swordfight long take

All movies seen on 05/12/2021

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Crazy Samurai Musashi (2020)

Directed by Yûji Shimomura

Action

Overview

In 1604, Miyamoto Musashi attacked the Yoshioka family at their dojo and defeated master Seijūrō and his younger brother Denshichirō in two duels. To save their reputation, the Yoshioka family decides to fight back with all 100 family members and hire an additional 300 samurai. Now Musashi sets out to defeat all 400 enemies in his most famous battle.

Length 92 minutes

Actors

Tak Sakaguchi | Kento Yamazaki | Yosuke Saito | Ben Hiura | Arata Yamanaka | Fuka Hara | Kôsei Kimura | Nobu Morimoto | Akihiko Sai | Masaaki Takarai | Kinsyu Wakayagi

Viewing History (seen 2 times)

Viewing Notes

Totally get the criticisms of this film and they are justified. The “long take” feels more like a challenge or exercise than an actual film or part of a film. That said, this is extremely my shit and yes I am biased b/c I love Tak Sakaguchi and will watch anything he does. For a feature length movie this feels more like a short film with a hyper elongated middle section of essentially the same thing over and over (a single 77 minute take sword fight between Tak’s Musashi and the 400* other samurai). It can be pretty dang darn dull if you’re not along for the ride. And b/c it is a long take there’s no wild sword or acrobatic stunts (no wire work). It’s literally one guy clanging swords with a bunch of other guys. Again, potentially boring if you don’t want to watch that for 77 minutes.

Initially I was like, “uh oh this isn’t gonna work” but slowly transitioned to “oh wow I really love this!” The humor and ridiculousness of the entire thing isn’t lost on Tak or the filmmakers so they poke fun at it in a meta sorta way. So my opinion went from “probably wouldn’t bother viewing this again” to “damn I wanna order the Japanese Blu in hopes it has extra BTS featurettes**!”

Probably spoilers ahead….

Positives:

- Tak looks GREAT***. Gone is that puffiness he displayed as the big bad in KINGDOM.
- How the long-take is broken up in segments to give Tak a rest (also how it starts purposely slow and paced knowing he’s in for the long haul).
- Shooting just before dusk to show the change in time as it gets slighter darker.
- The near lack of dialogue, which at first I didn’t like, but grew to appreciate. Altho Tak’s few lines are very funny.
- Remembering back to my brief moment chatting with Tak at FF about how much I loved the long-take in YAKUZA WEAPON and how he’s kept that idea of a making an even longer more challenging long-take with him all this time.
- *Amusing that there’s really only maybe three dozen samurai but they are used over and over as the sword fight moves to a new location but it’s 400 total that Musashi has to fight.

Negatives:

- CGI blood will always look like CGI blood. I wish they hadn’t used it at all. Seeing the same blood animation over and over kinda ruins the effect. Super big negative for me.
- I dig the abandoned village set but it makes no sense in the context of the story nor is there an explanation. Also, why would there be a small girl carrying sticks in the middle of this abandoned village. It’s a cute scene but yeah. Either clean up the set to make it look like it’s being inhabited or explain why they are suddenly in this empty town.
- **Not a single extra / bonus feature on the DVD release, which is probably true of the Blu as well. I give props to Well Go for bringing these titles to the US but calling bullshit to not have any extras (this goes for most of their releases here).

***guessing that the rehearsals for this really shaped Tak up; def the best he’s looked in a long time. Curious if he did an entire run-through before they filmed. Regardless, I’m sure each segment of the long-take was practiced several times. So Tak should look this great. I would presume that the epilogue was filmed before all that b/c that’s puffy Tak.

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