Das Schwert des Shogun

Way back in 1980, I saw "The Bushido Blade" as a late night premiere on CBS. Much younger then, I was fairly impressed with the romance and action and the film was fondly remembered over the decades.

25 years later, the film comes out in DVD and I had to get it.

Well...

My disappointment was palpable. Richard Boone gives a loud, obnoxious performance as Commodore Matthew Perry, top billed James Earl Jones, while in fine voice and shape, only appears for about 2 minutes of screen time. The rugged Frank Converse comes off fairly well, but I can't understand why a Japanese actress was not cast as Tomoe instead of Laura Gemser. Sonny Chiba and Mako make good impressions, but something's not right when Mayumi Asano, playing Yuki, gives the best performance in the film. And this, with virtually no dialog. But, perhaps, that explains it right there.

Poorly written by William Overgard, a Rankin-Bass in-house hack, the story, beginning with an offensive minstrel show, is about the search by American sailors for a stolen ceremonial samurai sword, meant as a gift for the President of the United States in 1854 Japan. The three Americans are aided in their search by noble samurai Chiba and half-caste warrior Gemser. What bothers me most is the lack of any texture in the story. Most scenes take place against utilitarian sets with no detail. The countryside, where most of what passes as action takes place, is flatly filmed. Worst of all, none of the local Japanese have any significant dialog, and surprisingly, have no involvement in the story, but, act only as background color for the three or four major characters. Very strange. I think there are less than 10 speaking roles and half of those are of the "Yes, Sir. No, Sir" variety from extras.

After some disappointing samurai battle action over the sword against a lord and his poorly trained army of warriors...it just ends. You might be surprised by the suddenness of the fade out, but, that's all there is. I understand there is an alternate version running about 10 minutes longer, but, besides an extended ending, I can't imagine what might be missing or added to improve things. In retrospect, viewing the film after so many years brought back certain story reservations I had even as a youngster. Plot holes abound and the final fate of the sword and it's pursuers is not ironic as intended, but just leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

"A swashbuckling Samurai saga that beats SHOGUN!" - Star Bulletin

Now, I bought a copy of this motion picture on video cassette that was released by Thorn-EMI Video, which means that the violence, beheadings, blood, and nudity are all intact as opposed to edited in the TV broadcast version.

The reason why I purchased it: I needed a test tape for VCR repair. For one dollar, you get an old tape where you wouldn't care if the machine decided to eat it!

Anyways, since I bought the tape and have also seen Shogun before, I figured I would give it a whurl. I have watched this movie and I'm glad I only spent one dollar on it!

While the premise of the story is certainly interesting enough, the low budget and TV-like production values doesn't do the premise any justice at all.

The acting feels badly forced at many points, which is also coupled with some rather claustrophobic cinematography, nervous direction, and snapshot editing. (It felt like I was watching a TV show that seemed to almost feel like "Hawaii Five-O" with all the pointless and quick zoom-ins to objects in the frame.)

The pacing felt somewhat uneven, perhaps to where it was trying to rush the story forward to reach the end sooner. This might explain the 92 minutes runtime on something that might have required up to 150 minutes to properly play in order to account for character relation to each other and their settings. In contrast, Paramount wisely produced Shogun as a television miniseries, as the original novel could simply not be condensed to even a four hour epic without losing too much. (Although, the re-editing of the miniseries with only a small helping of new footage in an attempt to make a motion picture out of Shogun was a very bad idea.)

There didn't seem to be very good interplay between the characters. The relationships that you may see develop in this picture tend to develop rather quickly and, therefore, unrealistically. The characters also seem somewhat simple and, in many ways, unbelievable. In concert with the atrocious acting, it made watching the characters about as appealing as watching a bad sci-fi movie without MST3K. In contrast, Shogun had characters that developed intricate interplay over a long period of time. They had shown themselves as complex individuals and continued to develop in the settings and with the other characters throughout the story.

Also, the one thing that caught me totally off-guard was the production company: Rankin-Bass.

Now, Rankin-Bass is a production company that is primarily responsible for children's programming. They had produced the animated version of "The Hobbit," "The Last Unicorn (1980s, ITC)," and "The King and I (1999, Warner Bros)," as well as producing various Christmas specials in the 1960s and 1970s like "Frosty, the Snowman" (Need to get to the north pole before melting), "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" (I don't want to wear a lump of coal on my nose!), "Little Drummer Boy," and "T'was the night before Christmas" (You know, the one with the singing clock to make Santa forgive a city for a letter written by some mouse who used "long words."). To those familiar with the 1980s, Rankin-Bass was also responsible for "Thundercats" and "Silverhawks."

Now, this did give a reason why the movie sucked as a whole: a production company with experience only with children's entertainment cannot hope to produce an R rated picture without creative difficulty.

Now, even though this film was co-produced with a British firm: Trident Films, the producer was Arthur Rankin Jr. himself. Jules Bass apparently did not have any involvement with this production.

Watch out for a cameo by James Earl Jones. Mako, Toshiro Mufune (who played in Shogun as well), and Sonny Chiba are other well regarded actors who starred in this movie.

If anything, try it for a rental and watch for yourself. This is assuming your local video store even has this movie for rent.

This movie does deserve some credit for at least trying to maintain a standard, although I would only give it one and half stars.

I might have given it worse, but watching REAL garbage like "Space Mutiny" and "Strategic Command" does make "Bushido Blade" and even "Xanadu" look decent. - Reinhart

I feel absolutely terrible giving a Toshiro Mifune film 4/10, but I could not do otherwise and remain honest. Frankly, the only acting in this movie that didn't leave me cringing was from the three main Japanese actors, (Sonny Chiba, Toshiro Mifune and Mako) and James Earl Jones who only had a tiny part. Frank converse didn't do a terrible job, but it wasn't a very enthusiastic performance. The rest of the actors deserve little more than scorn. Commodore Perry (Richard Boone) left me absolutely cringing every time he opened his mouth.

Frankly there was little, if anything, in this movie to recommend watching it. The culture is portrayed in a caricature manner, if not outright incorrectly. The history is wrong. The acting is terrible. The action scenes are decent, but not worth much.

I wouldn't say avoid this movie at all costs, but don't go out of your way to see it either.

It's always a little fascinating when a filmmaker undertakes a production at least partly outside their own country, and at least partly in another language. I would love the chance to read all about international co-productions like this, and learn how they came into being. What makes this instance particularly interesting, for good or maybe mostly for ill, is the ultimate form that it took, which is plainly evident very early on. Japanese filmmaker Kotani Tsugunobu may be directing (credited as "Tom Kotani"), and much of the picture may have been filmed in Japan with the cooperation of Toho. Why, much of the cast and crew is Japanese, including icons Mifune Toshiro and Sonny Chiba. Yet between the involvement of famed U. S. producers Rankin/Bass, and the screenplay of U. S. writer William Overgard, far more than not 'The bushido blade' absolutely feels from top to bottom like an exclusively Hollywood affair, and often in the worst of ways. This doesn't mean that it's not enjoyable - it is, to one degree or another - but the sincerity of it all is very much in question, and I'm also curious just how the contributors viewed their participation in retrospect.

Let's not beat around the bush: this does not treat Japan, its culture, or its people well. At best the feature offers a hopelessly simplified interpretation and depiction, and at worse the ignorant racism and jingoism of the nineteenth-century American characters is extended to the sensibilities with which the Japanese are portrayed. The Americans are roundly arrogant, with a conflated sense of self, virtue, and superiority; even when the script doesn't have the Americans specifically looking down on Japan as a backwards, quaint nation of "savages," the Americans are made out to be the definite heroes, and the Japanese to be the definite villains. And the thing is, despite the premise, there actually isn't a lot of room for nuance in this flick, for the characterizations are reduced and heavy-handed, if not purely archetypal or stereotypical - and the plot isn't far behind. One boyish, kindhearted sailor happens to have studied the language; his beefy uncle is much more physical and oafish; their designated leader will quizzically be dubbed an honorary samurai after being on Japanese soil for all of one day. One Japanese woman is soft and demure; one (played by Indonesian-Dutch actress Laura Gemser) is more dubious yet as she is The Fiery Warrior, The Warrior Poet, The Soft Woman, and The Romantic Interest all rolled into one.

I can forgive the very ahistorical story appended to a reimagined rendition of Commodore Perry arriving in Japan in the 1850s. I'm more concerned about the characters that fill discrete narrative roles, but without any hint of depth or nuance. I'm more concerned about how the scene writing flimsily tosses in sundry odds and ends that emphatically say "Japan!" for those viewers whose only experience with the Land of the Rising Sun is what they've seen or heard poorly represented on television: samurai, a violent code of honor, a long history of isolation, earthquakes. I'm certainly more concerned about how the plot at large seems rather loose, defined more by (a) some small set number of essential beats, and otherwise (b) general vibes, more than cogency, cohesiveness, or a mind for impactful drama or thrills. And I'm concerned by how even beyond conception and conjuration, the execution of this flick is wanting. Save for some nudity and greater levels of violence, this often comes across like the sort of highfalutin, "pip pip!" live-action adventure fare that Disney churned out in previous years. This sense comes from the writing, certainly, but also from the decided lack of polish in too many action sequences, as if professional stunt coordinators and fight choreographers weren't a thing. (At least "dueling master" Kuze Ryu shows that his involvement was not for nothing.) Sometimes it almost feels like Kotani was director in name only, and some unnamed American counterpart was actually in charge to see that all possible clichés and empty, tiresome tropes made their way in.

Sure, the filming locations are beautiful. The costume design is pretty sharp, and the production design and art direction. Some of the stunts and effects are better than others. It's reasonably well made. The movie is still entertaining to some extent, and I don't regret watching. But this needed so badly to be written and made more carefully, with more input from Kotani and Toho, and with less from Rankin/Bass. I don't know where precisely the responsibility lies for how this turned out, but I really have to wonder just how everyone felt about it when all was said and done as a title that frankly does a disservice to Japan and which in no meaningful way evinces anything except Hollywood with its all too common misrepresentations of This or That. Chiba is wasted here, and Mifune even more so; the same could surely be said for other stars. 'The bushido blade' is okay if you happen to come across it, but even if you're a huge fan of someone involved, there's no major reason to check it except as something light to pass the time on a quiet day. Maybe that's all it needed to be, but I expected something more solid and sure-footed.

I read the premise on the back of the case and thought Bushido Blade would be a great movie. Granted, I knew movies about Japan made in years past could be somewhat contrived, but the description made it sound like a good adventure story in an interesting setting.

Unfortunately, this turned out to be less than that. While always entertaining, everything was a little gratuitous, a little forced, a little affected. The only particularly likable characters were Mifune's, Mako's and Chiba's, and the whole thing sort of just deflated as it went along.

Furthermore, I found myself laughing out loud at the particularly violent moments. Half of it was just at how intense they were, but a lot (if not most) of it was how unintentionally funny they were.

This leaves a lot to be desired. It's not bad by any means, but it has none of the magic that Mifune's other movies do.