[KFCC] Samurai Fiction Review

Story: A Samurai clan looses a sword that was given to them by the Lord of the land. Heishiro Inukai the son of an official decides to go and get the sword back and save his clans honor. His 2 childhood friends join him on the mission to find the sword which is the possession of a rogue samurai by the name of Kazamatsuri. The three young samurai track down Kazamatsuri and challenge him to a fight, within moments they were defeated. Heishiro only survived because of the interference of Hanbei, who begged to spare the young mans life. Hanbei brought Heishiro home and healed nursed him back to health, Heishiro seeked revenge but Hanbei will try to change his mind from using violence.

Review: At first glance Samurai Fiction looks like one of those old black and white samurai movies but nothing could be further from the truth. This movie is a masterpiece in visual quality, shot completely in black and white with some use of color in key scenes. This is director Hiroyuki Nakano`s first major film production, he worked on music video's prior to making this movie. The directors skill in making the most of a simple scene really showed in this movie, every scene in the movie is visually alive. On the other angle this movie still stay very true to the old samurai movie style, a style of movies such as Seven Samurai. The story is generally basic, a quest of a samurai's honor.

There were a lot of characters in this movie some more important than other but each of them had their uniqueness and qualities. This little spot light on the characters showed us some very interesting personalities, such as the old ninja master. You saw that they were not hollow characters but there was so much more to them that we did not see. On the other hand the overall take on the characters did not glorify the main characters, the story was not fully centered around them. The cast was great and added to the general beauty that this movie had to offer.

Some of you must be thinking there is going to be some heavy fighting and a lot of blood, that is not the case. Violent swordfighting is kept to a minimum, this is a quasi bloodless movie. The swordfights that are seen in the movie are pretty basic and simple, nothing elaborate but a simple realism. Even without a high action level this movie has a high entertainment factor for the wonderful story and rich visual beauty.

The subtitles were perfect on the DVD version and the text did not scroll by too fast. This movie is simply said a work of art, it is worth seeing at least once. The style used in this film is very interesting, it will resemble old samurai classic while making a very self defining mark of its own. One thing we forgot to mention is the soundtrack, music is a very important part in this film. Some people might find this strange but a very up beat rock / jazzy soundtrack was used. It was an interesting contrast having old black and white movie mixed with a modern soundtrack. We found the use of the music synchronized with the various scenes of the movie perfect. The movie is something special, it is worth taking a look at especially for a samurai movie fan.