Excellent

Rating: 9/10 (6 February 2005)

This movie is a masterpiece, and that it was made by Kurosawa at such a late point in his life is truly amazing.
As has been previously noted, this movie is a rough adaptation of a play by Shakespeare (though not 'Macbeth,' as the previous review indicated, but 'King Lear'). However, the setting has been transferred to feudal Japan, and the themes updated somewhat by Kurosawa. The result is a reinterpretation that needs no understanding of the original play, and is on its own one of the great artistic masterpieces of film in the 1980's.
The image from this movie that stays with most people, I think, is a clear comment of the world surrounding Kurosawa in the decade of Star Wars (the Reagan program) and the invasion of Afghanistan (by the USSR). The most lasting image of this movie points to a world on the brink of apocalypse, and Kurosawa uses his cinematic techniques to bring a story of feudal Japan into the modern world, and it contains messages still relevant in our current time (with the revival of Star Wars and the new invasion of Afghanistan - among other countries - it is clear that we are not too far from the world of the 80's).
This movie can convey an artistic point that is still relevant through it's oblique interaction with the modern world, and aside from that, it is a great work of art.