05-12-2006, 02:05 PM
Twilight Samurai is actually a classic chanbara. It just drops the ball when it comes to the finale fight, so if you go to see a chanbara flick for the swordfights, you'll be sorely disappointed. If you want artsy camerawork, actors with long pregnant glances ala Jane Austen, you'll like this. Strange as it may seem, the unrequited love theme is huge with chanbara films. Recall the Musashi/Otsu love story in the Samurai Trilogy - wow, could you milk a relationship of missed opportunites anymore than that? I mean it dragged over three freakin' full length movies...
I agree with CF about the concept of tension in the finale fight. It's all about that finale or lack thereof. That's what cripples Jet Li's upcoming Fearless. You can make montages of just fights (and I've seen one of Jackie Chan fights) but it grows strangely tiresome out of context. That's why films like Tom Yum Goong (see http://brotherhoodofdoom.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=173) fail ultimately. They just didn't balance the story.
The crying shame of Twilight is that it was totally set up for a great finale fight. The tension was there. The actor had the talent. For some insane reason, the director chose to set it in a dark house where you could see anything.
And for the record, Twilight was originally in Japanese, of course. It's just the version I saw that was in Mandarin. A friend of mine who has an extensive asian cinema collection lent this to me, but most of his titles he acquired in Chinatown, so it's some pretty funky platform stuff. Plus he speaks Mandarin, Cantonese and English, so it's no problem for him. I'm always willing to give a film a go in another language, even without subtitles. Often it makes it more fun for me. I just gotta get one of those cheap Asian all platform DVD players so I can unlock more ...
I agree with CF about the concept of tension in the finale fight. It's all about that finale or lack thereof. That's what cripples Jet Li's upcoming Fearless. You can make montages of just fights (and I've seen one of Jackie Chan fights) but it grows strangely tiresome out of context. That's why films like Tom Yum Goong (see http://brotherhoodofdoom.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=173) fail ultimately. They just didn't balance the story.
The crying shame of Twilight is that it was totally set up for a great finale fight. The tension was there. The actor had the talent. For some insane reason, the director chose to set it in a dark house where you could see anything.
And for the record, Twilight was originally in Japanese, of course. It's just the version I saw that was in Mandarin. A friend of mine who has an extensive asian cinema collection lent this to me, but most of his titles he acquired in Chinatown, so it's some pretty funky platform stuff. Plus he speaks Mandarin, Cantonese and English, so it's no problem for him. I'm always willing to give a film a go in another language, even without subtitles. Often it makes it more fun for me. I just gotta get one of those cheap Asian all platform DVD players so I can unlock more ...
Shadow boxing the apocalypse