Another Kurosawa Masterpiece.

Rating: Null/10 (12 February 2000)

I consider myself a big fan of Kurosawa, though I haven't yet seen all his films. Thus, if he made c**p, I'm not yet aware of it. As far as I'm concerned, Kurosawa was an untouchable genius in his field, and for my money was the Japanese Kubrick.
Kagemusha is another samurai story, this one being about identity and death. Gloriously filmed sequences increasingly border on dreamlike vignettes, like the battles in the third act: the Double and Shingen's brother sit atop a hill looking into a blood-red curtain of smoke that is intermittently shocked with blue gunfire. Absolutely stunning, the film truly predicts the direction Kurosawa would move in his final years: to the ethereal, heavy-handed whimsy of RAN, A RHAPSODY IN AUGUST, and DREAMS.
And the final sequence, in which the Double crosses a field of dead men and horses in a single-handed attack on the armed enemy, is one of Kurosawa's greatest achievements.
Highly recommended.