Linbeymusol Wonderful character development!

Robert Joyner The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

Keira Brennan The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

Staci Frederick Blistering performances.

sucks-9 There are many things that make Samurai Fiction fantastic. The first thing: the black and white cinematography. The second thing: Instead of blood spurting, spraying, and oozing from dead samurai, the black and white image of the dying person gets a red filter over it and fades away once the man is dead. The third thing: the funky rock soundtrack. The fourth thing: The way Heishiro yells his dialogue when he has short temper. And the fifth thing: The current message of peace throughout. It is a shame that Hiroyuki Nakano hasn't been as successful with his other films as he has been with Samurai Fiction. Hopefully, that will soon change.

chaos-rampant I think the title of this review sums up SAMURAI FICTION. It doesn't approach the heart of samurai cinema (and I doubt that was among its intentions) but it transforms the form in new and interesting ways.Whether or not the title is a direct reference to PULP FICTION, the fact remains that SAMURAI FICTION tries to be the same hip, cool and stylish update of the classic chambara genre that Tarantino's movie was for the gangster genre. Whether or not it succeeds or that it's SF's intention for that matter is up for debate and down to personal taste I guess, but either way SF is every bit the fresh breath the stagnant genre is in desperate need of for years now. As a big fan of both chambaras and jidai-gekis I find myself torn between my purist self that wants to dismiss SF as having only a cursory resemblance of the genre and being too cool and slick for its own good, and my escapist self that enjoys kicking back with an unashamedly entertaining movie. The truth of the matter is that chambara has always been a dynamic genre, one that evolves in cycles that begin with movies that venture outside the mold: movies like SF. YOJIMBO in the early 60's made the traditional period dramas of the 50's obsolete overnight. Ditto for Kenji Misumi's LONE WOLF AND CUB in the early 70's. Even if SF didn't have the same power to motivate change in the genre, I applaud it for trying. SF is very open about what it is and what it's not from the credits sequence alone. Dark silhouettes practicing fencing in front of red-lit screens. I wouldn't be surprised if Tarantino lifted the sequence verbatim for KILL BILL vol. 1, he has that "homage" tendency after all. It is with this heavy stylization that SF opens and our genre expectations are instantly shifted to this conscious capsule where the samurai style meets a western form. The rest of the movie plays on this same motif. A traditionally eastern genre delivered with a very western approach. Whole sequences and all the swordfights are edited like a music video, from the tight editing to the music to the frequent use of wide angle lenses and effect shots to the actual music that is as far removed from Toru Takemitsu and his scores for Kobayashi and Shinoda as one could imagine. SF is content to take risks but they don't always pay off. The misuse of music is enough to give Dario Argento's choice of Motorhead for the soundtrack of PHENOMENA (a horror movie) a run for his money. Techno beats, heavy metal guitars and double-bass drumming are all mixed in a hodge podge of western sounds adding to the anachronism SF aims for. It's not out of purism that I didn't like them, they just didn't feel appropriate for the mood and scene although the music video-ish editing did its best to accommodate them. However the black and white photography is solid good work, the acting is nice and the comedic timing spot on. SF balances neatly on both the serious and comic with an emphasis on the latter but it works quite well on both fronts. Add to that the good swordfighting and the fact it manages to pull off the "hip" style relatively well without feeling phony and you've got a quite good neo-chambara that deserves major points for at least trying to push the envelope of a stagnant genre in different ways. Ever since the late 70's samurai cinema has hit a dead end and various attempts at cross-genre mixes tried to revitalize it to no avail. Maybe the halcyon days of the 60's are over and the chambara genre is a thing of the past as much as the American western, with the only option left being revisionism (which has also been done to death – I guess re-revisionism is due next). Maybe it will take another YOJIMBO to pull it off its legs and usher it in a new direction. SF is not quite the genre messiah and frankly I can see fans of Tarantino and Guy Ritchie enjoying it more than Mizoguchi loyalists but it's perhaps the best entry point to the genre for modern audiences with no prior experience (especially for young people who usually gravitate to the "cool" and "hip") . That's a success in itself.

fuzzybeasty Labelled as 'a samurai movie for the MTV generation', this unfortunately is only half-accurate and does a great disservice to the film. When a film is labelled as 'for the MTV generation', we think of fast-cuts, jump-cuts, loud techno, a soundtrack designed purely to make money, weak-plot, and something to keep grabbing our weak attention spans every five minutes to make sure we're still interested. This film is not one of those.The soundtrack is a modern sounding bluesy/rock/techno affair which in many scenes is actually superbly in line with the events of the film. At times, some may find the music jarring with the period setting, but it never overwhelms you by getting in the way of the film or the story.The story itself starts out as being fairly ordinary samurai fare, but as the film progresses so too does the story, adding many additional layers to both the protagonist and the antagonist of the piece, as well as raising some very good and thoughtful moments.The story does not race along like a modern day adventure or action film, in fact it has the same kind of pace that you would expect from a Kurosawa piece at times, or a spaghetti western. Slow and languorous with occasional bursts of violence.All of the main actors acquit themselves more than adequately, in both the dramatic sequences and the all-important duelling scenes.This though, because of it's revisionist nature, is one of those films that will truly divide people. Some will consider a great piece of revisionism for the samurai legend, others won't be able to tolerate the modern sounding soundtrack. Neither are wrong, here it all comes down to what you expect or want from a samurai film. Although it worth pointing out that the classic samurai films also had 'modern' sounding scores when they were made, no samurai film has a truly 'authentic' soundtrack.I personally found the film to be hugely enjoyable and at times moving, and I would heartily recommend it to most people that I know.

Seth Powell (playingkarrde) I feel rather bewildered after reading some of the comments on this board. They all seem rather positive towards this film whereas throughout watching all I could think of was how awful it actually was.First of all, I felt the ronin-come anime character Kazamatsuri was of particularly poor casting. Tomoyasu Hotei may be a famous singer and guitarist in Japan, but that doesn't make him an ideal role as lead antagonist. first of all, his mannerisms and overall presence on screen was so far beyond anything we have come to expect from samurai behaviour that it comes off looking more like an anime character than a serious master swordsman. Besides his innate ugliness, he commands no presence on screen, certainly not comparable to the great Toshiro Mifune and any comparison is an insult to Mifune's genius. This is even more evident when he comes up against aging samurai Mizoguchi who has his act down perfectly. The good vs the bad here of the characters is mirrored in the actors' performance, screen presence and overall commanding of the samurai behaviour.Many have also noted the shooting style of director Hiroyuki Nakano. While its obvious in parts he has tried to emulate Kurosawa in style, and in few cases does so very well, too often do we see his true understanding (or lack thereof) of the cinematic artform. His style comes off more like a University graduate than a Japanese professional. The black and white, while understood in its use, is again not used to its fullest as the film was shot in colour and simply desaturated in post. This loses the clarity that black and white film usually allows, leaving us with footage that has all the disadvantages of colour and none of the advantages of black and white.Lastly, I have to mention the appalling soundtrack. I'm all for putting a fresh spin on an old genre, but this eighties heavy rock simply does not fit. It seems that people are too obsessed with having the music achieve something not done before in samurai films that they don't pay attention to whether or not it is any good. While it may be perceived that I did not get what the film makers were trying to achieve, I think that is wrong. I understand the need to try and breath new life into an aging genre, but I think that this is not that man to do so, and that this is certainly not the method of going about it. While the film wants to be a comedy in many areas, it also tries very hard to have serious undertones and comes off not knowing which is the most important to the film. If this is the samurai genre for the MTV generation then I want no part of it. Twilight Samurai is a much better representation of modern samurai storytelling and I think that should be the direction film makers should be taking the genre. Leave the MTV generation Battle Royale and let true samurai fans have quality like Twilight. This amateurish movie isn't needed here.