rickrudge

Monsieur Spade (2024)

Clive Owen plays an older Sam Spade in 1960's France. He had been hired by the late Bridget O'Shaughnessy (remember her from the "Maltese Falcon") to deliver her daughter, Teresa (Cara Bossom) to her supposed husband (?) Philippe Saint-Andre (Jonathan Zaccai). Philippe is a shady/dangerous character. The local Chief of Police, Patrice Michaud (Denis Menochet) isn't crazy about Philippe and Sam meeting.

The language and spacing has a definite Dashiell Hammett sound to it. Yeah, Clive Owen isn't a Bogie, but he comes pretty damn close. His sarcasm, bravery, and street-smarts serve him well. In the first episode, we don't even see him carry a gun but he can be a tough-guy when he needs to be.

My wife thought it was kind of slow and there is a bunch of subtitles. I've only seen the first episode, but I'm looking forward to seeing more episodes.

Crazy Samurai Musashi (2020)

The original title is "Kyo Samurai Musashi". On Tubi, this is called "Crazy Samurai: 400 vs 1". Tak Sakaguchi plays Miyamoto Musashi, Japan's most renowned swordsman, writer of "The Book of Five Rings". Musashi would travel around Japan challenging different schools of swordsmanship. Naturally, this Samurai would have many enemies seeking vengeance.

Like many of the old Samurai films, the samurai hero would fight against a challenging opponent, but eventually it got ridiculous and the hero would fight whole armies of swordsmen, all at once. However, the swordsmen would still come at him one at a time. This is no different in this film.

You would think that Musashi would be tripping over bloody corpses and severed heads The quick shots of blood is crated digitally and the wounded opponents politely stagger out of the scene. They needed to keep this PG-14. One thing about "Crazy Samurai" is that they gave the illusion of a single take which was kind of cool (ala Hitchcock's "Rope"), especially with a hand-held camera. It does have the effect of playing a first-person shooter game, following the protagonist to other scenes where other fighters are. Musashi even stops at various locations to drink, eat, and pick up newer swords. Was this taken from the PS5 game "Ghost of Tsushima", or perhaps from a Japanese game that we don't see here in the States.

This continuous shot is a nice gimmick but it might not be the kind of movie you need to see a second time.