This movie is an origins story (or prequel, if you will) of a Japanese TV show that presumably nobody on these threads has ever seen. So let's just judge the movie on its own merits.
The story is unoriginal. The plot is convoluted. The motivations are not believable. The dialogue is trite. The acting passable.
And those are this movie's good points.
My gawd, the gratuitous violence. A woman dragged around while tied up. A man beaten with a cane 100 times. Villagers slaughtered.
There is a complete lack of long shots, suggesting to me this was filmed on a TV show budget.
So it's a bunch of cynical samurai. Oooh, edgy.
The story is unoriginal. The plot is convoluted. The motivations are not believable. The dialogue is trite. The acting passable.
And those are this movie's good points.
My gawd, the gratuitous violence. A woman dragged around while tied up. A man beaten with a cane 100 times. Villagers slaughtered.
There is a complete lack of long shots, suggesting to me this was filmed on a TV show budget.
So it's a bunch of cynical samurai. Oooh, edgy.