| Kosei Saito's 1979 film
G.I. Samurai, a movie with an interesting
concept that rarely does anything of interest
with it. There are just so many problems with
the production that it's hard to pinpoint
where it started to go wrong. The story is
one such example, as it deters in every such
direction to try and incorporate several side
stories. For all this deterring, though, the
character development is still weak and the
acting is merely serviceable, while the cast
themselves are almost impossible to distinguish
between. The movie's music doesn't help matters
either, as it rarely ever flows with the events
unfolding onscreen.
The movie's story starts out
with a squadron of soldiers that are caught
in a time slip which rockets them back to
the mid 1500s. A number of vehicles are also
caught in the phenomena, including a tank,
a helicopter, a ship, a jeep, a truck and
an APC. It's not long, though, before the
group is met with fire from a confused group
of feudal warriors, as Kuroda Nagaharu's clan
rains arrows down on their position. One of
the soldiers, Yano, counters by shooting at
the archers with a machine gun, causing the
feudal warriors to panic and flee. The action
causes a rival clan, which was nearby, to
approach the self-defense force soldiers,
as Iba Yoshiaki, the commander, quickly befriends
Nagao Kagetora, the warrior in charge of the
feudal flank of warriors. This action angers
Nagaharu's clan, which attacks the SDF soldiers
as soon as Kagetora and his men leave the
area. The assault claims a couple of the SDF
troops, as some of the vehicles follow Nagaharu's
clan back to their base. The modern weaponry
decimates most of the fort, as Kagetora's
warriors rush in to assist and finish the
job.
All is not well amongst the
SDF soldiers, though, as that night one of
them starts to run around the camp brandishing
a torch until Yano kills him, citing his reason
is that there were explosives nearby. Meanwhile,
Yoshiaki decides that their greatest hope
for getting back to their time period is to
throw history out of order by defeating the
nearby warring clans and to rule the area.
In the mean time, a SDF solider, Mimura, meets
one of the local girls and the pair soon have
sex, as the girl then follows the solider
around. Unfortunately, that night, Yano steals
a good deal of ammunition, kills the boat's
captain, and, with a group of other renegade
soldiers, goes around murdering and rapping
the locals using the boat. The instance forces
Yoshiaki to attack the AWOL troops, killing
them, while he sinks the ship as a sign of
respect to them. The SDF soldiers then move
out, joining Kagetora's warriors as they go
around defeating the other clans. Eventually,
the two forces split up to conquer the clans
more quickly; however, this causes the SDF
troops to get surround by Takeda Shingen's
clan, as they lose all but six of the soldiers,
along with all the vehicles. With their advanced
weaponry gone, Kagetora's superiors order
him to kill Yoshiaki and his troops as their
use has ended, while the local girl kills
her lover, Mimura, as he requested.
The story as a whole is simple,
while not much of notable importance occurs
for most of G.I. Samurai's, excruciatingly
long, two hour run time. In terms of the concept
for the movie, it works here, at least for
the first fifteen minutes. If nothing else,
the actual time slip sequence is well done,
while the first battle with the advanced weaponry
vs. the feudal soldiers is interesting. Past
that, though, the allure of the concept begins
to wear thin, but the real fault of G.I.
Samurai is the lack of focus. Overall,
the movie has a lot of side plots, as a couple
of the characters wander off to have their
own adventures. The result is little side
stories that don't mean anything to the plot
as a whole. The romance aspect of the film
is one example of this, as a local girl, her
name is never mentioned, follows around one
of the soldiers after he has sex with her.
What makes this particularly odd, though,
is that the girl never says a single word
of dialogue during the entire movie, and their
romance is actually given a fairly large amount
of screen time as well. Another example of
this is when two of the soldiers go off in
a vein attempt to see if only a certain area
was affected by the time slip. The ending
result is that one is killed by warriors while
the other runs off a cliff by accident, which
is unintentionally humorous. All in all, the
movie as a whole feels like it belongs more
as a syndicated TV show then a feature length
movie. Aspects like the AWOL troops seem like
it could have been its own episode, as its
residual impact on the story is nil, minus
some dead troops and the loss of the boat.
The film feels like someone took the plots
from a show's entire first season, and hacked
it together into a movie. The result is so
many intertwined stories and characters that
it's hard not to be frustratingly confused
and left with a feeling of bombardment as
the film unfolds onscreen
Something that shouldn't go
unmentioned, though, is the film's climax:
the SDF vs. Takeda Shingen's clan. The sequence
as a whole, from beginning to end, lasts almost
exactly 25 minutes. That's right, 25 minutes,
uninterrupted. The battle starts out with
the feudal warriors acting pretty incompetent,
as there are helplessly slaughtered, until
it switches about eight minutes into the confrontation
with Takeda Shingen's clan starting to slowly
deplore effective attacks. There is no signifying
reason for the switch, like the arrival of
more warriors or the lose of a vehicle, the
tides of the battle just seem to suddenly
swing. The movie itself tries to sympathize
with both sides too, showing struggling dead
feudal warriors while flashbacks of the SDF
soldiers' daily lives are played too. The
ending result is that the audience doesn't
care for either of them as they hack each
other to pieces. The battle itself has a few
redeeming moments, such as one of the warriors,
played by Hiroyuki
Sanada, leaping out of the helicopter
to be caught by his comrades' banners. Overall,
though, it's simply too long, and edited together
in a fashion where it's hard to get a sense
of exactly what's going on through the entire
thing. It meets a rather silly conclusion
too, as suddenly Yoshiaki, on foot, just strolls
over to Lord Takeda Shingen and then fights,
and kills, the lord. It might not sound bad,
but considering that the SDF troops and vehicles
were fighting off the warriors for more than
20 minutes, and Yoshiaki, by himself and on
foot, was able to accomplish what they weren't
just cheapens the whole thing.
In regards to the character
development, it's fairly aggravating. The
focal character here is Yoshiaki, but it's
hard to like him. His view is pretty twisted:
why return to an era where you can't use the
advanced military weapons one has? A message
of peace if there ever was one... His early
conclusion, that they can get back to the
Showa era by creating a large enough time
disturbance through ruling the current era,
is just nonsensical as well. To be honest:
it's exactly what the audience wants to hear,
as you would be hard pressed to find someone
who isn't watching this movie for the battles.
However, that still doesn't excuse the lazy
writing, as there are numerous other ways,
such as a solider being kidnapped by one of
the clans, to create a more convincing means
for why they are fighting. Beyond Yoshiaki's
quench for war, not much else is learned of
the character. His compassion for his troops,
who are dying around him, is pretty lacking,
save the AWOL ones which he sends the boat
down with them. The other notable character
is Yano, the rogue of the group and one of
the few characters one can recall by name.
He is essentially the character in the film
that the audience is intended to hate, and
he works on that level as he goes around and
kills his contemporaries. His only mentioned
motivation seems to be that Yoshiaki infiltrated
a coup he was apart of before the movie started,
prompting punishment to be given to him. It
would have been nice if the character was
a bit subtler, but his intentions are fairly
clear from the start. As for the remainder
of the troops, the director shows flashback
scenes to try and make the audience remember
them, for example one's a runner, and another
has a girlfriend waiting at the station for
him. For the others, he has small events surrounding
them, like one that befriends a local grandmother,
while another befriends a fatherless family.
The fault here is that Saito simply tries
to develop too many characters at one time,
to the point where it's nearly impossible
to keep track of them all. The fact that they
are all wearing the same uniform only complicates
the matter too, while Agata, with his red
scarf, is the only one beyond Yoshiaki to
really stand out. None of the character development
feels organic either, as the director has
to cut away to side stories for just about
everything, instead of trying to weave it
into the main plot of the film.
To make matters worse, the
acting here does little to make the cast stand
out or become more enjoyable. Sonny Chiba
plays the lead, Yoshiaki. However, the actor's
most notable traits and usual film presence
are absent here. He is the film's hero, but
only engages the enemy in melee combat one
time toward the end of the climax. When he
does so, Chiba shines, but it's a very brief
moment during the film's entire run time.
Otherwise, his performance here is only serviceable.
Chiba doesn't make the character likeable,
but his performance doesn't hinder the viewing
experience either. On the flip side, Isao
Natsuyagi plays Kagetora, and his performance
here leaves something to be desired. Natsuyagi
introduces the character to the audience as
he acts like an obnoxious child in the face
of all the military hardware, while belting
out an equally annoying laugh. His performance
fares better near the end though, as he shows
remorse for being ordered to kill Yoshiaki
and his troops, and portrays the more serious
nature of the character far more effectively.
As for the rest of the cast, they play their
parts competently enough. Nothing worth scorning
here, but then no performances from the supporting
cast to sing praise about either.
In regards to the music, Kentaro
Haneda churns out a fairly forgettable score
here. Some of the tracks aren't bad, but they
don't fit with their particular scenes in
the film at all, such as the cheerful melody
that plays as the AWOL soldiers are raping
some of the local girls. In general, there
isn't a lot of music in the movie, though.
In fact, a rather annoying effect is used
quite a bit here, where everything goes silent
save one aspect, for example the sound of
a waterfall. It's the type of effect
one would expect for a dramatic closure to
a movie, but it's a common occurrence here
and becomes annoying fast as it doesn't appear
to represent anything in particular.
Overall, G.I. Samurai
is a pretty poor film. There are a couple
brief moments where the interesting concept
of having modern day soldiers fight against
their feudal counterparts pays off, but they
are so sparsely littered across this two-hour
film that they generally aren't worth it.
The movie, though, was a moderate success
at the box office in its day, enough so, apparently,
that Kadokawa green lighted a remake of the
picture, directed by Masaaki
Tezuka, for 2005 titled Samurai
Commando: Mission 1549.
|
(1.5/5)
