The director's stated purpose was to see if "they" could make a classic-style samurai movie. He and "they" utterly failed. Having seen this garbled junk I would proffer the guess that his real purpose was not to make a movie but to get material to write a how-to book, one that could be titled: "How to Make a Samurai Movie by and for Idiots." It's not just the U.S. that is dumbing down, is it? Pity Japan.
Three-fourths of the way into the movie I mentally disassociated from it because the endlessly repetitive overkill became boring. Suddenly I could care less about the movie and began to wonder what it would be like going to a restaurant run by Takashi Miike. It would be, perhaps, somewhere in the foothills of western Tokyo. I would arrive at dusk and be welcomed into an old thatched-roof cottage converted into an elegant restaurant. The darkness of the interior would be softly illuminated in places by the warm glow of paper lanterns. Each dish would arrive one by one like scenes in a movie, one after another. First a lacquered bowl of miso soup would arrive at my table, wisps of wakame, a few green slices of scallions, and tiny cubes of tofu would be floating in it. Yum. Delicious. Then would be brought a side dish of thinly sliced lotus root, green soybeans, and hijiki. So far, so good. Then, about halfway through the repast, industrial fluorescent lights would be clicked on overhead, the purpose of which would be to destroy the deeply rich traditional atmosphere. Then, with about as much finesse as his scenes in the movie of ultimately boring, repetitive, endless crowds of slashing that went on and on and on and on. And on and on. And on and on and on and on and on, Miike would toss down a slab of cooked eel right on the bare wood of the table in front of me, not even bothering to use a plate. He would uncap a jar of powdered Japanese sansho pepper and dump the whole jar all over the cooked eel. Looming over me and wielding the bloodied thigh bone of a wild boar he would force me to eat this concoction with my fingers. Me, all along, thinking, like while watching the movie, that good cooks know that a dish of food can be ruined by using too much strong spice. The movie was made unpalatable by that boring, eye-numbing endless crowd slashing scene. Watching these scenes could be likened to trying to eat sushi that is more wasabi than rice or fish, or that eel above that isn't just tastily seasoned with sansho pepper but thickly submerged in it.
And that stupid ending. The guy doing a terrible impersonation of Toshiro Mifune's Kikuchiyo in "Seven Samurai," walks up to the only other survivor of the "total massacre" showing zero evidence of his having been stabbed through the throat and otherwise slashed by swords deeply. I was thinking perhaps they were both dead until I didn't care. The only meaning that scene had was Miike was messing with the audience. So it's like back at the restaurant, I'm finished; unsatisfied, nauseous, and with an enormous mental bellyache, but ready to pay the bill. Miike says, "Ha ha. You know that eel you thought you were eating? It wasn't really eel. It was just textured vegetable protein. Ha ha. Fooled you, didn't I?" Betrayed to the very end.
I mentioned idiots above. Whenever I see a movie this bad I look at the hundreds of people listed in the end credits and wonder how so many people can be involved in the making of a movie and not one of them with an ounce of intelligence. Today I got to thinking that movies are often not so much group efforts as mob efforts, and, after all, a mob has the intelligence of the least intelligent member, and the emotional stability of the most psychologically-screwed-up person in the mob.
Why was the evil Lord Naritsugu Matsudaira riding a horse when people in his position at that time would be carried in palanquins? Stupid. How did those 13 idiots carry tons of explosives by foot over those mountains they got stupefyingly lost in? They hardly had anything at all they were carrying. Stupid. What was that business with the jerk who had rows and rows of spare swords to swap with the ones he was using? To show him throwing them to amazing effect would be something to see, and an excuse to have a ready supply of them, but, no, he just drops the ones he's using, leaving himself briefly unarmed, just to pick up another sword. Stupid. That huge vat of dark-looking blood spilling from the top of a building that had neither precursory scene nor effect. Stupid. Those 13 jerks who have their quarry trapped like vicious barracuda in a barrel. What do they do? Figuratively get naked and climb into the barrel. Stupid. They didn't have to kill 200 armed warriors, they just had to kill one man. One man who was constantly in the open riding a horse. That they couldn't is just, well, stupid. Takashi Miike and his crew. Stupid. Me for wasting my money on this trash: The most stupid. Downright imbecilic. Thanks for making me feel that way Miike, not.
But is it possible that the film makers became so befuddled that this movie, beginning in a super-realistic way, at some point, in a totally confusing fashion, reverted to being something merely symbolic and representational in a ludicrous way? Exactly. Ludicrous. Way beyond stupid.
Three-fourths of the way into the movie I mentally disassociated from it because the endlessly repetitive overkill became boring. Suddenly I could care less about the movie and began to wonder what it would be like going to a restaurant run by Takashi Miike. It would be, perhaps, somewhere in the foothills of western Tokyo. I would arrive at dusk and be welcomed into an old thatched-roof cottage converted into an elegant restaurant. The darkness of the interior would be softly illuminated in places by the warm glow of paper lanterns. Each dish would arrive one by one like scenes in a movie, one after another. First a lacquered bowl of miso soup would arrive at my table, wisps of wakame, a few green slices of scallions, and tiny cubes of tofu would be floating in it. Yum. Delicious. Then would be brought a side dish of thinly sliced lotus root, green soybeans, and hijiki. So far, so good. Then, about halfway through the repast, industrial fluorescent lights would be clicked on overhead, the purpose of which would be to destroy the deeply rich traditional atmosphere. Then, with about as much finesse as his scenes in the movie of ultimately boring, repetitive, endless crowds of slashing that went on and on and on and on. And on and on. And on and on and on and on and on, Miike would toss down a slab of cooked eel right on the bare wood of the table in front of me, not even bothering to use a plate. He would uncap a jar of powdered Japanese sansho pepper and dump the whole jar all over the cooked eel. Looming over me and wielding the bloodied thigh bone of a wild boar he would force me to eat this concoction with my fingers. Me, all along, thinking, like while watching the movie, that good cooks know that a dish of food can be ruined by using too much strong spice. The movie was made unpalatable by that boring, eye-numbing endless crowd slashing scene. Watching these scenes could be likened to trying to eat sushi that is more wasabi than rice or fish, or that eel above that isn't just tastily seasoned with sansho pepper but thickly submerged in it.
And that stupid ending. The guy doing a terrible impersonation of Toshiro Mifune's Kikuchiyo in "Seven Samurai," walks up to the only other survivor of the "total massacre" showing zero evidence of his having been stabbed through the throat and otherwise slashed by swords deeply. I was thinking perhaps they were both dead until I didn't care. The only meaning that scene had was Miike was messing with the audience. So it's like back at the restaurant, I'm finished; unsatisfied, nauseous, and with an enormous mental bellyache, but ready to pay the bill. Miike says, "Ha ha. You know that eel you thought you were eating? It wasn't really eel. It was just textured vegetable protein. Ha ha. Fooled you, didn't I?" Betrayed to the very end.
I mentioned idiots above. Whenever I see a movie this bad I look at the hundreds of people listed in the end credits and wonder how so many people can be involved in the making of a movie and not one of them with an ounce of intelligence. Today I got to thinking that movies are often not so much group efforts as mob efforts, and, after all, a mob has the intelligence of the least intelligent member, and the emotional stability of the most psychologically-screwed-up person in the mob.
Why was the evil Lord Naritsugu Matsudaira riding a horse when people in his position at that time would be carried in palanquins? Stupid. How did those 13 idiots carry tons of explosives by foot over those mountains they got stupefyingly lost in? They hardly had anything at all they were carrying. Stupid. What was that business with the jerk who had rows and rows of spare swords to swap with the ones he was using? To show him throwing them to amazing effect would be something to see, and an excuse to have a ready supply of them, but, no, he just drops the ones he's using, leaving himself briefly unarmed, just to pick up another sword. Stupid. That huge vat of dark-looking blood spilling from the top of a building that had neither precursory scene nor effect. Stupid. Those 13 jerks who have their quarry trapped like vicious barracuda in a barrel. What do they do? Figuratively get naked and climb into the barrel. Stupid. They didn't have to kill 200 armed warriors, they just had to kill one man. One man who was constantly in the open riding a horse. That they couldn't is just, well, stupid. Takashi Miike and his crew. Stupid. Me for wasting my money on this trash: The most stupid. Downright imbecilic. Thanks for making me feel that way Miike, not.
But is it possible that the film makers became so befuddled that this movie, beginning in a super-realistic way, at some point, in a totally confusing fashion, reverted to being something merely symbolic and representational in a ludicrous way? Exactly. Ludicrous. Way beyond stupid.