Samurai I

Year: 1954

Grade: B

Country: Japan

Director: Inagaki

Review

the first half of the film is told at an unrelenting pace – scenes are cut very quickly and we are hardly ever allowed to ruminate on what we’ve seen. the storytelling does slow eventually and at that point we are able to catch up with everything and start to connect with the characters and their story. visually the film isn’t as striking as kurosawa’s samurai work and part of that, i think, is due to it being filmed in color. sure, ran was in color, but kurosawa used the color to great effect with that film. those rants aside, the story is good and it is toshiro mifune playing the lead so it’s a good film. i’m eager to see the second and third installments.