Forgettable Kurosawa Film

Well, though I disagree with some of your assessments, at least you put down arguments, which is quite refreshing than the usual poster coming here and stating "this movie sucks", and yet offers us nothing what he or she did not like.

1) Story very slow to unfold:
Only after a full hour does the characters journey to smuggle the princess to Hayakawa commence. The first hour is monotonous and mostly consists of Tahei and Matakashi annoyingly bickering with each other while wandering about an equally monotonous landscape. Even when the plot finally starts to unfold, nothing much happens. The action scenes are few, and the few present are apathetic.

I think the beginning is to set up the two characters and their plight. They are not the most likable, but that's the way they were intended to be portrayed. Someone stated that Tahei and Matakishi were two of the most unusual characters put on film at that time. We can be sympathetic with their situation, but not sympathetic with them. It was very un-Hollywood. Which of course, it was their plight that Lucas borrowed for the droids situation in the first STAR WARS movie.

For example, in the duel between Makabe and Tadokoro the choreography is too apparent and the fight itself is very dull. But a lack of action can easily be overshadowed by intriguing characters. Unfortunately, Hidden Fortress lacks both.

I think it is one of the best fight scenes in Kurosawa's movies, and if it looked choreographed, remember, these are two generals with battle experience, and know how each other fights, so they realize that rushing it or over-do it against their worthy opponent is not the smart thing to do.

Princess Yuki is by far the most annoying character of the film, but the actress Misa Uehara is to blame. Her acting is completely awful! Her strident voice and stiff mannerisms is unbearable. Also, after that scene when she is crying, mourning the death of her decoy, it's no surprise that she didn't win any awards for best actress. She might have won a Razzie if it existed when the movie was made. Her acting was so "powerful" and "moving" that she made me cry when towards the end of the movie she sings a poignant song...I was crying from laughter, though. Mifune is also a disappointment in Hidden Fortress, but this is Kurosawa's fault. Mifune is too restrained as the obedient, loyal servant and doesn't display his terrific swordplay or justified arrongance as much as in his other roles. The best scene of the film is when Mifune finally releases the inner lion inside him and chases down and eliminates two guards on horseback. The prostitute/maid Princess Yuki rescues is also irritating. She should have let Matakashi and Tahei "have their way" with Princess Yuki. They drew sticks…It was fair and square. The butch prostitute should just have waited her turn.

Actually, that's the way the characters were meant to be played. Princess Yuki is a spoiled, feisty person who usually gets her way. And in the crying scene, remember, she was brought up as a samurai, and for her to cry in front of others would not have been the honorable thing to do, yet it sickens her to think that someone died in her place and eventually she gets overcome by emotion. Mifune is restrained and obedient, because his character is the definition of a loyal servant. He was to his late Lord and now his daughter, which of course she even chastises him for. Plus, the girl they picked, once she learned that she was the princess, she too, like Mifune had a sense of loyalty and wanted to protect her at all costs.

At one point of the movie, Gen.Tadokoro (Susumu Fujita) appears to be the antagonist, but the viewer later finds out he is not. But during and before the duel, when I believed Tadokoro was the main antagonist, I thought that Fujita was badly cast. Fujita’s Tadokoro looked emaciated and is much older (or at least looks so) than Mifune. Judging on appearance and physique, I felt that Tadokoro did not pose much of a threat to Immune’s Makabe and so, the little challenge he does provide during the duel was unrealistic. But the real antagonist of the film is the Yamana Tribe. But through out the movie Kurosawa depicts the army and its commanders as inept and craven. Therefore, the lack of any real menacing threat denigrated my concern for the characters, since I did not feel as if their journey was as dangerous as it was made out to be. Also, why was the Yamana Tribe necessarily bad? In the movie they are never shown to be corrupt, depraved or unjust. So what if they beheaded the decoy who they believed to be the princess; she is an enemy to them. And also, where in the movie does it depict the Princess' Akizuki tribe as being benevolent and kind-hearted? For all I know, she could be the evil one.

Before there was Toshiro Mifune, Kurosawa's main actor to portray adventurous samurai was Susumu Fujita. Though, he doesn’t have that dramatic knack that Mifune possessed, I still think the did a good job. Ultimately, he becomes the most sympathetic character in the movie, I felt. And he and Mifune, played each other off well. As for which tribe was the evil one, we are basically getting one side of the story, that's true, but the story is not about who was the more evil, but of young girl seeing situations and people, she would have never seen in her entire life. It was almost like a coming-of-age story, or a PRINCE AND THE PAUPER tale.

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th1a90 wrote:

Also, why was the Yamana Tribe necessarily bad? In the movie they are never shown to be corrupt, depraved or unjust.

I guess you don't count attacking a neighboring clan, rounding up thousands of men to do hard labor, selling off women to serve as prostitutes, and punishing people by deforming their faces as being corrupt, depraved or unjust. Or maybe you were joking here too.

Agreed on the story being slow, the characters being annoying and the fact I also couldn't give a damn about those characters.

But really, the only Kurosawa film I've liked was Yojimbo - the rest are either boring/overly dramatic/cliche/redundant.

RetardoArona-gone but not forgotten. Nvr4get. Send me your thoughts on this unjust tragedy.