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| Title: Samurai Banners Videos
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Samurai Banners |
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Film Description
| Samurai Banners is very much Toshiro Mifune's film. It was made for his production company, and he dominates every scene as the wily, limping ex-ronin (masterless samurai) Yamamoto, chief adviser to the warlord Shingen Takeda. Takeda is vain and none too bright, and Yamamoto acts as the power behind the throne, working through his overlord to achieve his eventual goal of national unity. The action of the film is set in the mid-16th century, very precisely dated by intertitles to the period from 1543 to 1561 when Japan, torn apart by the ambitions of rival warlords, was gradually being unified under a single rule that would become the Shogunate. Many Japanese directors (notably Mizoguchi and Kurosawa) have been attracted by this cruel, turbulent era. Hiroshi Inagaki, a reliable workhorse director who specialised in period action movies, avoids any hint of social criticism or modern political parallels, and instead exploits the resources of colour and widescreen to stage his story like a pageant, full of swirling battle scenes and grand romantic gestures. Samurai Banners makes for stirring spectacle; the historical background, though complex, is made clear even for non-Japanese viewers, and Mifune, lurching saturninely around with more than a hint of Olivier's Richard III, is as charismatic and unfailingly watchable as ever. --Philip Kemp |
Studio: Connoisseur Video
Release date: 1999-03-01
Cinema release date: 1969-01-01
DVD release date: 1999-03-01
Format: VHS Tape
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Cast:
Yoshiko Sakuma, Kinnosuke Nakamura
Extras/Features:
Subtitled, PAL, Widescreen
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