Wonderful Entertainment and Tought Provoking

Rating: 10/10 (27 December 2004)

I thought the movie was incredible! I read many of the comments regarding Samurai versus Ninjas and felt that the portrayals of both did not detract from the movie. It was not billed as a docudrama. However it appears to have been based on history.
I speak some Japanese and found Tom's accent quite credible. The wonderful subtleties of the Japanese in their almost inscrutable expressions were so very clear in the eyes of the actors.
It was a 2 1/2 hour movie and the time just sped by. Some of the lesser action scenes really helped to engulf the viewer in the entire culture and feeling of story. One could almost imagine being part of it.
Great to see actors riding ability as well, it certainly added to the reality of the movie. Being a horsewoman it really takes away from the movie when a person is supposed to be riding horses for more than just a guided trail ride and truly cannot ride. It certainly adds to the realism when they can ride and apparently do all of their own riding in the movie. Also having the horse's almost always the same is a nice bit of detail. Tom's mount appeared to be only two horses with a very subtle difference in the white blaze.
The bloody(gory) scenes were handled quite well. One got the sense of the horror of the battles without being inundated with too much graphic realism. For a 'war' movie, it was extremely well handled and totally fleshed out the characters which added so much more to it than just one battle scene after the other.
The scenery was excellent. The costumes fantastic. Even though the material was present day the reality in the design of the costumes took away any distraction regarding them being 'polyester' :-).
Going through the stills of the movie gave me an even more incredible appreciation for the action shots. The stills say so very much about the training, etc. of the actors. They certainly look very realistic and one gets the impression that the actors were in excellent physical shape and really doing the action shots w/o obvious stunt doubles. There may not have been any stunt people at all. I do not know for a fact either way. But it appeared the main characters did all of their own action acting and riding.
Excecellent in all ways. I got an excellent appreciation for the ways of the samurai. The sense of honor and customs was beautiful and enlightening.