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Shockingly enough, I did NOT see any bad martial arts movies this month. I did see a bad Chinese movie starring Yuen Biao, but it only had one non-gun-related fight scene and it could hardly be called a martial arts battle... it was more like two guys beating the unholy daylights out of each other with whatever might be at hand. In fact, if you ever get your hands on a DVD of "On the Run" starring Yuen Biao, skip to the last scene. You don't have to have seen the rest of the movie to appreciate the end, and you'll have saved yourself over an hour of your time.
On with my review. This month, I would like to tell you about a movie which you should NOT avoid like the plague. This movie is called SF: Episode 1, or alternately, Samurai Fiction. It is quite possibly the most entertaining samurai movie I have ever seen, and shorter than those serious-minded Kurosawa films from the 60s.
Samurai Fiction is the story of a youngish Samurai guy who sets out with his two best friends to kill a badass samurai who stole an important sword from their clan. That is all you really need to know about the story. The important thing about this movie is that it is FUNNY. If you crossed a normal samurai movie with a light-hearted comedy anime, this is the movie you would get.
The humor in this movie comes from funny situations, misunderstandings, and stereotypes of the genre. I'm not going to describe any of the funny scenes here - that would ruin them for you. Let's just say that if you're familiar with samurai movies (especially any of Akira Kurosawa's films, or the Zatoichi movies), or samurai-era anime, you will appreciate the humor here.
Interestingly enough, despite being made in 1998, this movie was filmed in black-and-white. I'm pretty sure this was done in homage to the samurai movies of the 60s. There are bits of color here and there, including whenever anyone dies, a red filter is applied to the scene.
I do have one complaint about this movie - the fight scenes are a little disappointing. Early on, we're treated to a scene of the badass samurai displaying his skills for a lord. We're shown an opponent - and then the opponent is scene flying through the air unarmed. While I can appreciate that this was done for comic effect, one of the guys had a kusarigama!!!! Not only is the kusarigama my favorite weapon, but it's very difficult to fight against a flexible weapon with a katana. It would have been a very impressive fight scene to see.
Other fight scenes consist of the typical "samurai cutting guys down with one swing" style that we're probably all familiar with. This is done in the older, bloodless style, not the "OMG, blood and guts everywhere!!!!" style of Kill Bill, Ninja Scroll, and that 1980s (or was it 90s?) version of Zatoichi. Because of this, and the mostly clean humor, I'd say this movie would warrant a strong PG or mild PG-13 rating.
One other thing worth noting is that Samurai Fiction is a movie with ninja in it that doesn't suck! The ninja don't have crazy magic tricks, they don't hover on kites, and the girl ninja doesn't rip her clothing off. The ninja do provide some of the movie's funny scenes (I love the aging ninja leader, even if he does remind me of a Japanese William Shatner), and they also do a few cool things. Most importantly, they act how you expect ninjas to - they sneak around, they wear good disguises, and they throw ninja throwing spikes at people.
I cannot recommend this movie highly enough for anyone looking for a light-hearted approach to the samurai movie genre. In fact, since this movie seems to be officially called "SI: Episode 1" I can only hope that there are more Samurai Fiction movies on the way!
It is worth mentioning, by the way, that the DVD I viewed this on only contained options for Japanese, and Japanese with English Subtitles. No dub for you!
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