Kumokiri Nizaemon (1978)'s comments

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monty

A far cry from Gosha's excellent samurai output in the 1960s.

11 years 10 months ago

nbats

https://ok.ru/video/2415533427298

2 years 3 months ago

"Gosha made Bandit Vs Samurai Squad after a long period of smear campaigns and aborted projects," explains Seiichi Sakai. "So Gosha used the film as a way to convey a vengeful message against society and redeem his honor. He went so far as to speak his very mind through the dialogues of characters like both Kumokiri and Shikibu Abe. Obviously, he did not abide by the literary source and changed it utterly. Shotaro Ikenami felt offended by all the changes and thought that the films were not refined enough." Indeed, the novelist so hated Bandit Vs Samurai Squad that he allegedly said after a private screening: "Why didn’t Shochiku hire a better director?"

Bandit Vs Samurai Squad does not really hold up to the aesthetic quality of Gosha’s previous films. The director fell out with cinematographer Masao Kosugi during production, hiring Tadashi Sakai instead (Hitokiri’s Fujio Morita was then unavailable). Moreover, the film was simultaneously shot by four units, who burned the midnight oil every day, which made the film a narrative and stylistic patchwork. According to set decorator Yoshinobu Nishioka (who also worked on Hitokiri), "Bandit Vs Samurai Squad does look like a big jigsaw puzzle...

- http://www.midnighteye.com/features/hideo-gosha-part-2-the-will-to-live/

8 years ago

Siskoid

In my limited experience, Hideo Gosha seems to be a director that embraces trends. His Three Outlaw Samurai looked like Kurosawa's classic chambara films; his Bandits vs. Samurai Squadron 10 years later is right out of the Zatoichi/Lone Wolf and Cub playbook, filled with lurid sex and violence (and a Zatoichi clone). The core of the film - "one last job" as they say in the heist business - is strong, pitting freedom fighting bandits against samurai working within a corrupt system in a perpetual gray zone. But it's also a very complex tapestry of characters and motivations, some of which I found hard to follow. In the first hour, I was often asking myself who was who and working towards what, and whether I should care when someone died in a glorious arterial spray. Even when I was confused (look, everyone has the same hairstyle, what can I say?), there were still some memorable images to be had, and the last 100 minutes (it's a long 'un) really did bring home to cynical ironies Gosha is known for.

2 years 4 months ago