| 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 has so many problems with
the production that it’s hard to pinpoint
where it started to go wrong. The story here is
one such example, is it deters in every such direction
to try and several incorporate side stories. For
all this deterring, though, the character development
here 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
has 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, but 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 have
him 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. The concept for the movie 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
the 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 movie feels like someone took the
plots of 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
the warriors 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, and message, is pretty twisted
as well: why return to an era where you can’t
use the advanced military weapons one has? A message
of peace if they’re 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, as 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,
Yoshikawa, here. However, most of the actor’s
most notable traits are absent here. He is the
film’s hero, but only engages the enemy
with a melee one 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. 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)