Kagemusha (1980)

The Story The story is about a thief who is asked to impersonate a daimao for three years. The story is a complete mess! It doesn't know what it wants to be. It wants to be serious, with death and disparity. But out of nowhere the story decides to add comedy that really kills the mood the film is trying to set. There is even a scene where a character sings for no reason at all! The scene just happens out of nowhere and is never mentioned again and no one questions why he is singing. It is never made clear if he was singing to the other characters or the audience. It made no sense whatsoever. The story itself was unique and interesting, but the poor execution really did kill this film. The Characters The characters are pretty mediocre. We know barely anything about the main character other than he is a clueless thief and the servants aren't much better. When some of them die, it is hard to believe that the main character was sad because he knew NOTHING about them! The Special Effects The special effects in this film look awful! The backgrounds are blurry at times and the action scenes are the worst I have ever seen in my life. No, calling them action scenes is giving them too much credit because all we see is the character's (who are watching the battle) reactions to the fights and the only thing we see of the fight scenes are flashing, coloured lights and footage of guns firing that are recycled over and over again. These effects would of been ok if this film was made in the 60s (that was my original thought when watching this film), but it turned out they were released in 1980! I have seen better effects in older films then this! Final Thoughts Overall, this is the worst Kurosawa film I have seen so far. The story was poorly executed, the characters were ok at best and the special effects look like they were from the 60s. What amazes me is that this film won awards. Not just nominated, it WON awards, such as 'Best Foreign film' (French Acadamy Awards) and probably the most insulting, 'Best Director and Producer' (David Di Donatello Awards), when in a matter of fact, the director did a terrible job with making sure that the film had a flowing narrative, the cameras were shot at the right angles and that the actors were believable in each scene, which this film FAILED to do. I love Akira Kurosawa's films. I really do, but this film was atrocious. It isn't the worst film ever, but considering that Kurosawa directed masterpieces such as Seven Samurai and Ikiru, this film feels like a joke. The Story 2/5 The Characters 3/5 The Special Effects 1/5 Overall 2/5