I love this movie so much

Best movie ever!

Beautiful, moving film.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

I know Kurosawa is considered to be in the deified handful of the greatest directors in the world. It is sacrosanct to call anything he creates as anything other than a masterpiece. Seven Samurai is rightfully considered such since it has been remade and re-remade as well as specific scenes outright stolen for more recent movies. But Rashomon is no Seven Samurai. It isn't remotely in the same universe of quality, pace or sheer entertainment value. For this movie to be sitting on nearly every "name" critic's all-time greatest movies is utter nonsense. Did they watch the same movie I just did???I know, I know. Anyone who doesn't hear angels singing after watching Rashomon is a bloody brain-dead derelict. Before you crucify me - and you're welcome to do so - read these logical statements, then tell me how "AMAZING" this movie is:1) This is based on a 20 page SHORT STORY. The short story is exciting, has multiple perspectives, whodunit excellence with surprising twists throughout. This movie - using the exact same plot - runs 88 MINUTES. You're welcome to tell me where the extra hour of boredom was needed. Editing, editing, editing... 2) The cinematography is considered to be stunning. Sure, if you consider that M*A*S*H using the Santa Monica mountains as war-torn Korea would be considered stunning. It's just an overgrown backyard. Shot in B&W. Hand me a camcorder and watch me film my 10-acre backyard and you'll see some pretty amazing shrubbery too but it doesn't mean I'm a master cinematographer. Just because they have a shoe-string budget doesn't mean it has to be filmed like you have a shoe-string budget. 3) The woodcutter goes into the woods to chop wood for his home. Here's the thing... He's looking for ONE TREE!!! Paul Bunyan he is not. He walks past literally hundreds. Yet the guy walks for FIVE MINUTES before he comes upon the murder scene. How far was this numbskull going to drag the tree??? I refer back to #1 above. 4) So much is made of Toshiro Mifune being such an incredible actor. A "scene stealer" is what I read almost universally. Here's the thing about an overactor... when someone is SOOOO out of control, it doesn't matter how good the other actors are in a scene, they can't play off them and continue in a natural arc. Watch this buffoon "act". Kurosawa freezes on Mifune's face over and over (and over...) to show how intense he is. His wild actions, his running all over the flipping place for no reason, his staring into the clouds but comes out to yell at the guy TALKING TO A JUDGE about how stupid he is, the grunting that is positively unnatural... Scene chewing is not good acting. If this was a real person, he'd be in an institution forever and be forgotten. Instead, Mifune is not only considered a good actor, he's considered a GREAT actor. By what estimation? Conveying thought and emotion through logical action and restraint is acting. A lunatic is not exciting to watch. Especially when it's the same lunatic in every Kurosawa movie I've seen. Mifune is literally a cartoon character in a serious drama. I'll refer back to the canonical Seven Samurai and say the ONLY negative in that movie is Mifune's ridiculous overacting. It was painful. 5) The maiden... Oh, where to begin... Okay, she's supposed to be beautiful. A "goddess" is what Mifune's character calls her. Yet... she has zero eyebrows and two dark smudges halfway up her forehead throughout. She cries INCESSANTLY. I mean for a loooong time. No words, just crying. She's been raped. Her husband is bound up with ropes (I'll get to that in a moment). She's basically worthless to both men now by no doing of her own. I get it. But... She sits there with her husband tied up WHILE HOLDING A DAGGER and she cries and cries and cries without cutting the guy's ropes?? Plot points have to give way to logic sometimes. But her crying. Her screaming. Her CRAZY rant. This woman is bonafide insane. Talk about overacting. I refer back to #1 about pacing. 6) The husband. This guy is a SAMURAI??? Yeah, and I'm Abraham Lincoln. Every chance he gets, he NEVER pulls his sword. EVER. He follows an obviously deranged individual DEEP into the forest for no apparent reason other than a promise of swords we never see and leaves his unarmed, innocent wife in the distance in outlaw-infested woods. He's subdued in the most amazingly cringe-worthy wrestling match where neither party ever lands a punch OR pulls a sword. He's tied up with ONE rope wrapped around his biceps. He never tried standing up while he was alone for hours?? There's a reason Kurosawa didn't create "EIGHT SAMURAI" since this guy washed out in casting. 7) The sword fight(s). WTF??? Who taught these dumbasses to fight? One guy is an infamous outlaw. The other guy is supposed to be a samurai. Yet neither of them go for dozens of open kill shots, or dismembering an appendage, or even PUNCHES the other guy. They chase each other all over Timbuktu without ever actually FIGHTING. They actually drop their swords multiple times, throw LEAVES at each other (I kid you not!), and Mifune actually THROWS his sword at the Samurai. Seriously. And the Samurai just waits for it... OMG!!! "We crossed swords 23 times. Nobody has ever crossed swords more than 20 times with me!" Look, I'm not looking for the Olympic fencing team, but my 5yo with a plastic sword would have the common sense to try to lop off an arm or a leg or a head in 5 seconds when his life was on the line. A sword FIGHT means swinging, not running for the hills. BOTH of them. MULTIPLE TIMES! A fight to the death? Uh-huh. Dullest battle of all time. Again, referring back to #1 above. 8) The opening scene. The guys look like it's the most horrific thing they've ever seen/heard -- for a VERY LONG TIME. They say there are six unnamed dead bodies laying on the fence with their own mystery over yonder, yet nobody bothers to try to figure out their story. Grab a medium and let's hear THEIR stories. I'll bet they're at least as boring... I mean, interesting. 9... The ending... Oh, never mind. You get the picture.I don't live in a cave. I love foreign, well-made, artistic movies when they have a point. I've seen literally thousands of movies. I consider myself to be fairly literate and conscious of what makes a piece of beautiful art. The problem with this picture is: A movie is meant to entertain. If you bore your audience to death, you have lost the battle. It's a murder. Every witness will have a different story. Welcome to the life of a police detective. This story is not worthy of an 88-minute movie. Having a ghost speak is an interesting touch, but even that is overdone and becomes silly.This movie is nowhere near a top-250 list. The 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list is a joke for including this. If this movie deserves the classy, fantastic Criterion treatment, then so does Dumb and Dumber as far as watchability is concerned. That one had a decent idea too originally - AND it is entertaining. This one not only has the over-exposed Mifune, but it's just a bore to watch. Go ahead and flame me. But before you do, read my logical points above and tell me you haven't seen movies YOU have rated below 5 for being slow/boring/stupid/whatever and tell me they don't have more entertainment value than this. Kurosawa missed on this one. Please stop drinking the Kurosawa koolaid and think logically for a moment. That's all I ask. This should have been 30 mins. No longer. Spliced together with another two half-hour mysteries and that might be worth watching. As this stands, it's a waste of time. Watch any old Perry Mason rerun on television and you'll have more value. The action will be better and the acting will be refreshing compared to this snorefest.My last point... Any director that gives us FOUR different perspectives to a murder, then literally doesn't give the audience a resolution is a total cop-out. Choose an end and live with it. At least "Clue" had four endings but screened it in different markets with an end for each audience. Basic Movie Making 101: A movie has a beginning, middle and END (re: resolution!!!!). Ambivalent endings by a director is not "art", it's just lazy. Nothing more.

There's not all that much to 'Rashomon (1950)', with the different characters' points of views only offering slightly different takes on a relatively similar series of events, but at the very least it provides a unique way of telling an entertaining tale, one that's expertly shot with a fluidity seldom seen in cinema from the period. It's also filled with fantastic performances throughout. While the premise seems as though it aims to explore the free-flowing nature of 'truth' and how nothing is absolute, instead it looks at the lies we tell in order to project a better version of ourselves and also offers a rather ham-fisted examination of the deceitful nature of human-kind. It's ultimately a hopeful film, though, with the downpour of rain coming to a close with one final act of kindness. It's really its unique take on camera-work and story structure that cements it as a piece of cinematic history. 7/10

Before Seven Samurai there was Rashomon, the movie which brought Akira Kurosawa, and Japanese cinema, to the attention of Western audiences. It is probably for these reasons that the movie is regarded so highly. However, it is difficult to see what all the fuss is about. Plot is OK, but not great - it is even dull at times. On the plus side, it isn't overly long (though does feel longer than it is).Production is so-so. Yes, it was made in 1950 but it looks poor in comparison to even older movies (eg Citizen Kane). Performances are OK. Nobody stands out though.

Based on a short story by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Rashomon is one of Akira Kurosawa's biggest films and the breakthrough film that brought him and Japanese cinema in general to Western audiences. A tale about a murder and the various lies we tell each other to make sense of our existence.The film is about a murder trial. A nefarious bandit, Tajômaru (Toshirô Mifune), is accused of murdering a travelling samurai in front of his wife. We hear four different versions of the events that took place. One from each of the three and one from a bystander. Each tale differs from one another and in the end it's left for the viewer to decide who to believe.Rashomon is a clever tale and full of depths, but it also shows that Kurosawa was still travelling towards his prime. The acting is a bit overplayed in certain scenes. Mifune especially overacts constantly, which in some ways fits the character, but is still a bit jarring. The score is also surprisingly distracting. That being said, the camera-work is beautiful, the storytelling works very well and even the framing story about people hiding from the rain and talking about the trial is not as bad as it could be.And it's simply a fascinating story on thematic level. It's made clear very early that all the witnesses lie to make themselves look better. They all try to shift the blame, to make their own accord seem dignified or born out of necessity. Even the final story by the bystander has undercurrents that make it seem not as objective as it should. So who to believe?In the end the film provides no answers. Rather it asks us to wonder how common this sort of behaviour is in everyday life. Do we shape our subjective realities by telling stories? And if we do so, do we also allow the stories of others to have an affect on what we believe to be true, to be reality?It's up to you to decide. But first you have to ask the question in the first place.