No. 2: KAGEMUSHA (THE SHADOW WARRIOR)
Reviewed by Sam Hatch
AS THIS IS PART OF A RETRO NOSTALGIA BINGE AS OPPOSED TO A TRADITIONAL REVIEW, THERE MAY BE SPOILERS PRESENT IN THE TEXT.
Ahhh, yes. The very first dip into the world of Akira Kurosawa. As you can tell, at the time of this list's compilation I was mainly steeped in the world of the cult film. I had no intentions of being a film critic at the time (A heavy metal rocker, yes) and hadn't yet felt the need to seek out the classics. But Kurosawa's work was always lingering in the back of my mind. Of course as a Star Wars fan, the George Lucas connection was what first drove me to seek this stuff out. I had seen a poster for Ran in the lobby of Hartford's Cinema City back when I went to go see an early revival print of Blade Runner, so officially Kurosawa's work was my first realization that there were foreign films out there that people could go and see in theaters.
I never did catch that print of Ran, but years later after hearing how Star Wars was influenced by The Hidden Fortress, I figured I'd check some of this stuff out. Even if Kagemusha wasn't The Hidden Fortress, I suppose I still had myself convinced that I was going to see a fourth installment of Star Wars or something. I was also at that period when the notion of important films was just entering my consciousness, and as an angsty, moody young teenager, it felt so damned cool to be picking something like Kagemusha up off the shelf at the video store instead the The Howling Part 4 – the Shedding.
So it wasn't Star Wars, but it was pretty damned impressive nonetheless. Those color-saturated images of droves of samurai flags flapping violently in the wind will stick with me forever. Granted, as of this writing I haven't seen the film in many many years. I do own it, but on a shabby, pan and scan double-tape VHS collection. Luckily, it was just recently released via Criterion as a DVD special edition, so I plan to return to the world of Kagemusha soon. Plotwise all I can remember was that a high official (Shingen Takeda) was wounded and those loyal to him found a lookalike impostor to take his place while he (hopefully) convalesced. Other than that, I can only remember snippets, like the great sniper sequence early on in the film.
It's funny that the only Kurosawa film on my top twenty list is now the one I'm least familiar with out of his oeuvre. Dreams was the one that really sealed the deal for myself and Kurosawa. Finally checking out Seven Samurai, Rashomon, the Yojimbo films and yes… even Hidden Fortress proved to be a treasure trove of incredible films. So you got me. At this point in my career I was obviously fronting. A bit. Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy the film – but for the 18 year old Sam to place it before The Lost Boys shows that I was trying to show off a little bit. One thing's for sure though, this has gotten me fired up to check out that Criterion disc and revisit this title. I must say I chose some damned good stuff to front with.