Miyamoto Musashi e os 400 Samurais

Crazy Samurai Musashi is an experience not a movie. If you rate it like a movie you probably would find it just repetitive and not spectacular. What are you expectations? John Wick with a sword? No this is not it even if the corpse count is comparable. A Zatoichi movie? Kill Bill? No. After the first ten minutes you start being on the shoulder of Mushashi, understanding that every stroke of the sword is a duel per se, that the repetitive task of battling is life, that Musashi faced up with a grimace, ready to live or die but at its own pace, with its own rules. You see that he planned this journey and at the same time is ready to face the unknown, He's human, tired, but a war machine. He's THE samurai. Crazy Samurai Musashi. Not for every taste, but a Masterpiece. Great movie!

Totally unrealistic.

95% of the actors who supposedly get killed either fall behind a tree/building, get concealed by a couple of other actors, or stumble out of the camera field of view. Only to reappear minutes later.

When the camera eventually pans around only 2-3 bodies are there instead of a pile of around 60+ corpses.

You end up watching the same repeated sequence over and over... one person at a time attacks, gets pommelled on the head, crawls off screen, and reappears a few minutes later.

I guess due to the lack of actors involved this was necessary, but this is child's playground fare in its execution. An army being represented by a dozen or so people constantly running around the cameraman is beyond acceptable.

I appreciate a good gimmick and an indie film that tries to go big, but this was just exhausting. The reason anyone will watch Crazy Samurai Musashi is the 70 something minute long one-shot action scene that stretches from the opening title almost to the very end. Unfortunately the very same scene is the movie's biggest downfall. I will cut this movie a lot of slack. Obviously there wasn't a big budget and they had to squeeze every penny very hard. The talent on display here is generally fantastic, especially from main actor Tak Sakaguchi whose other roles I shall immediately seek out, the scenery is used well and very plausible. The choreography is deliberately non-flashy and rather realistic which I appreciate as a pupil of japanese swordsmanship myself. The one-shot action scene however wasn't the most compelling choice to show all of this talent off.

Every passing minute it becomes increasingly apparent how the scene was done as not only individual move lists get recycled like a standard fighting animation in a videogame, but rather entire sections of choreography. There's also a lot of obvious body armor on the stunt guys. I got most of my entertainment value from guessing the next move. Someone's looking suspiciously bulky? Belly cut! Someone's wearing a very obvious big hair wig? Gee I wonder who's getting hit in the head. Then there's the same guy who always stumbles into frame, gets tripped and cut in the back while falling. The lack of extras is a very glaring flaw. Everytime someone gets killed he literally runs out of frame to re-emerge unharmed a few moments later. It was laughably ridiculous. When enemies eventually stop running out of frame and stay on the ground you know this particular segment is about to end, our hero moves on to the next level segment where clones of the exact same guys will show up a minute later, circle around him and attack one at a time with the same pattern. Rinse and repeat for 70 minutes.

Now I understand the limitations at play here but they are rather unnecessary and self-inflicted. Had this been shot in a more conventional manner it would have been no problem to shoot and edit around them entirely and make for a more compelling, even enthralling movie. For all of its gimmicky glory the one-shot is used very amateurishly too. A lot of the action is constantly obscured by extras and the camera never moves in interesting and creative ways. The opening 30 minutes of the recent super smash hit One cut of the dead (which I assume was the inspiration) showed what fun you could have with a creative one-shot action scene. This movie felt like a chore by comparison. It just goes on and on without any tension or escalation. It's still an impressive and admirable feat, but ambition alone doesn't make a good film.

To add insult to injury the film ends in a legitimately spectacular (albeit obviously sped-up) and brutal action scene, which is shot, edited and choreographed expertly. Had the entire film been like this, with mood-setting scenes leading into gritty action, this could have become a genuine modern classic, akin to what Tsukamoto tried to achieve with his recent opus Killing. Unfortunately the director wanted to show off and ruined the amazing ingredients he had.

This is a Japanese movie? But calling it a movie is a stretch. Also apart from a exposition dump in the first 5 minutes there is about 10 lines so not that much Japanese in it. They spend over an hour with one samurai guy taking on an endless supply of stunt guys. Poor quality you could find better quality at a medieval fair show. To be fair they do slowly walk through a model Japanese village during it. It's boring what can I say how long does it take watching Japanese men struggling out of shot after being sliced then to immediately join the endless supply of grunts. It feels like a beat them up video game without any inputs and it's stuck in an endless cutscene which never ends.

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.