A waste of 90 minutes of my life

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

What makes this film so intriguing? There's so much about it that makes it so fun and yet so good. It pays great homage to its background. It gives us a view of the Zatoichi samurai film http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056714/?ref_=nv_sr_1) in terms of its slow-paced movement and action as well as the plot and emotion of a Kurosawa film (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000041/? ref_=nv_sr_1#director).There are also hints of fantastic direction. The poster features the famous silhouette fight, which went on to inspire another one in Tarantino's Kill Bill (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0266697/? ref_=nv_sr_1). The other great thing about this film is it's use of fantastic, trendy rock and pop music which really adds something to an artsy samurai movie. It gives a very nice, slick tone to the movie as well.I understand that the film is also called SF volume 1. Why isn't there a volume 2, I wonder?

In reality this is the second Japanese film I have seen, the first being "Hero." It is no let down. Once again the Japanese have delivered a truly beautiful and excellent movie. ("Ghost in the Shell" is Japanese, but animation just doesn't compare to these two movies.) "Samurai Fiction" is done in black and white, which (IMO) adds to the story. (Color always seemed a distraction to me - there's more drama in black and white.) Now that I think of it there is no diminish in the beauty either. So nearly everything is perfect with this movie.What held it back as a 10 is the use of music. At the beginning and in the middle the music is cross-cultural and completely obliterates all of the atmosphere the director worked so hard to create. (Some too modern music is used and some too old music is used - a rather _major_ disappointment for me.) However, (and quite suddenly) the music gets in synchronization (i.e. the style and selection match perfectly) with the movie. And so I slipped quite easily back into the story. But the rest of the movie is so beautiful and well done that I (it) didn't get in my way of giving the movie a 9 out of 10. (Loose these bad matches and the movie is a 10/10.) Human stories are true and dramatic across all cultures. (Perhaps one day God will bless man to realize this.) 9/10-Zafoid

Best I can say for this is the two actors (pardon my inability to figure which actor names) who come center stage in the latter half of the film, the samurai who's carrying the stolen sword and the retired swordsman with the daughter, show commanding enough presences that either could command the screen in a real samurai film. They even make Samurai Fiction's protagonist seem a little more interesting by association.The problem with guitar-based rock in films portraying this period is people don't walk, run, fight to a four-beat. I just re-watched Hidden Fortress on the largest screen with the best sound available here. Mostly it's scored with traditional wind, string, and percussion instruments. But in a few, I think unfortunate, instances, Kurosawa gave over to western instruments for the sort of "welling-up" music with which Westerners now attempt to wrench emotions their directorial skills haven't earned. I shudder to think that, besides swiping the plot, Lucas may have let Kurosawa's western interpolations inspire that awful Star Wars music. The soundtrack of Sogo Ishii's Angel Dust showed a film can be scored Japanese style-with modern instruments and techniques, and even interpolate, without being destroyed by, Western sounds. But what Ishii does is a long way from playing electric guitar unkeyed to screen movements. In the same theater as Hidden Fortress, months before I saw Toyoda's Portrait of Hell destroyed, to blindly good reviews, by a live indie band that seldom even glanced at the screen.On the other hand, I mostly liked Ryuhei Kitamura's Versus. Go figure.

"Samurai Fiction": Definitely worth watching - I thought it was a little slow at first (and a little sparse and inconsistent with the humour), but it definitely got better at the end. It won't make you more of a Hotei Tomoyasu fan (boy, he looks weird - almost like a manga character... like "Jei" in Stan Sakai's "Usagi Yojimbo"), and the swordplay won't exactly blow you away, but the adaptation of the black & white (with selective colour, a la "Rumblefish") genre is excellent. Being a Kurosawa fan, I especially liked the general "feel" of the cinematography and the video transfer, as it was digitally modified to add graininess and capture that circa-1950's TOHO ambiance. Critical attention was paid to camera angles, set design, character development and mannerisms, all playing true to the Kurosawa-esque model and at the same time sparing no opportunity for the sight gag and comedic element. Yes, for the Hirosue Ryoko fans-in-denial, the female lead (Ogawa Tamaki) bears a somewhat close resemblance (slightly less boyish), but that's besides the point. The movie felt like it was part of an Ulfuls music video at times (I think it was "Guts Daze"), which was exactly what made it so good. Highly recommended.