Samurai Cowboy

If you have never seen this film, you do not realize what you have missed. A buddy-movie remaniscent of Shanghai Noon, A powerful Japanise businessman moves to Montana to own a ranch and fulfill his dream of becoming a cowboy. Along the way, he gathers a group of cowboys including a rapper from a touring group, a bullied native-american and a cynical old cowboy. He also befriends a gorgeous veterniarian ho becomes a love interest. The five of them must work together to get a herd of cattle to market while an evil hotel owner sabotauges them at every turn so that he can aquire the ranch and flood the valley with a damm. This film seems to be underrated and not well known. I only saw it because it was on local TV the other night. Try your hardest to find this movie, view it and you will not be dissapointed!

Yutaka Sato (Hiromi Gô) is an obsessed fan of old westerns. He and his best friend dream of riding horses in Montana, but they are only office drones in Tokyo. His friend suddenly dies from overwork and he decides to go for his cowboy dream. He buys a ranch in Running Moose, Montana. When he sees it for the first time, he finds a rundown place with the cattle scattered. Gabe McBride (Robert Conrad) is the old ranch hand. Jessie Collins (Catherine Mary Stewart) is town hottie. Colt Wingate (Matt McCoy) is from the land baron family and he is looking to get Sato's property. Sato rescues Jack Eagle Eye from a bunch of Wingate thugs and hires him. He also hires country rapper C. C. Ryder who gets left behind by his band.

This has a lot of interesting ideas for a comedy. There is Sato's obsession with westerns. I don't know this actor. This seems to be his one attempt at breaking into western movies. Obviously, it didn't take. This movie needs a bigger lead who has more heat with CMS. This is a smaller production in Canada. I like the fish out of water premise. The evil land developer is fine. The cattle drive is fine. A lot of this is fine.

It's more of a story of a conflict between urbane versus rednecks than a cliché of the East meets West story. A successful Japanese sarariman (salary-man) who lost his best friend from karo-shi (death from over-working) settled in a ranch in Montana to fulfill his growing up dream of becoming a cowboy. Undertaking several conflicts against local people he gathers a band of five including old cowboy (Robert Conrad), a female veterinarian (Catharine Mary Stewart), a Native American nerd (Byron Chief-Moon) and a Country Western singing African American barnstormer (Bradley M. Rapier) to transport a herd of the cattle to pay off the mortgage. What is so different here from regular East meets West stereotype is that the Japanese cowboy is portrayed as a rich smart-ass backed by the image of powerful economy of Japan rather than another poor and stupid Oriental martial-artists like Jacky Chan. And it is remarkably enough that this film is of as early as 1992's even in the 21st Century many movies still trapped with the old fashioned image of the mysterious Orient such as the costume of Princess Amidara in Star Wars trilogy or the shallow spiritual image that self-conscious Steven Segal always try to emit, to name a few. In terms of a low budget flick it still is pretty close to be paired with classic Western films like Howard Hawks' masterpiece Red River. The director Michael Keusch tried his best to show humorous conversations, some musical sequences (don't forget that Go is one of Japanese top pop music icons!) dangerous stunts and even real cattle transportation as a herd. Overall, its very entertaining while skillfully avoiding unnecessary stereotypes.