Director: Kinji Fukusaku
Year: 1983
Country: Japan
Alternate Titles: Satomi hakken-den
Genre: Action/Epic
Plot:
Looking to solidify her power, an evil queen launches an attack on the royal family that can stop her quest for control, sending the last remaining member of the family into hiding. Finding solace with a former soldier who lives in the outskirts of the kingdom, they eventually come upon several sacred warriors who are foretold to appear and save the kingdom from outsiders. Realizing that they can end the curse placed upon her, they set out on an epic journey to reclaim the throne and stop the evil queen's power-mad plans.
Review:
Overall, there's a lot more to like here than expected. Among the better features of this one is the means through which it manages to wrap together a seemingly scattershot yet still engaging storyline full of wild and discordant plotlines. The central storyline involving the quest to find the fabled family member capable of unleashing the warriors so that there's an intriguing element of fantasy riddled into the rest of the story demonstrating a quest for power ordained through an ancient prophecy allows this one to be quite detailed and involved. Going through the role of extrapolating the prophecy into meeting the other soldiers who are part of the quest to save the kingdom by coming together to assist her in stopping the queen's evil plans. With the backstory about how her intent to get everything together in her possession, there's quite a lot to like with the story here.
That gives the film a great baseline for some really strong and intriguing action scenes featured here. The influx of swordplay and other forms of martial arts fare are pretty prominent here, offering a slew of stellar sequences where the various clans are fighting each other in massive armies against each other leading to some fantastic effects with large-scale sets to match the energy depicted. The big scenes here, mainly the initial ambush on the guards surrounding the fortress who are safeguarding the family and the main assault on the Queen's fortress hideout, manage to go for a fantasy element just as much as it does with the series of monsters and creatures included in the series of interactions found here. Combined with some intriguing visuals along the way that help to paint the whole thing in a fantastic high-budget gloss, there's quite a lot to enjoy with this one.
There are a few minor issues here keeping this one down. One of the main factors against it is that, for such an involved and highly contained story, there's a lot of underwhelming work here that makes it feel quite scattershot. There's far too much going on here to have so little context and information on the various people within this one, as characters change their alliance and allegiance at the drop of a hat, the motivations get dropped into something else, and there's way too much going on to justify why this one is as long as it is. That's the other big factor here where it's just dragging in places trying to the details of the prophecy and how the warriors need to come together that could've been brought down a bit to take the length down somewhat. These are what bring this down overall.
Overview: ***.5/5
A rather solid fantasy/epic but not without some issues, this one comes off enjoyable enough for what it is while still having a few minor drawbacks that keep it down. Give it a shot if you’re a fan of this particular style or are fans of the creative crew while most others out there should heed caution with this one.
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