Turtle Heart
No. I only gave this absurd film a 3 due to its fine cinema-photography. The story takes the legendary idea of master swordsman Myamoto Musashi and splits it into two different people, both named Musashi and from that silly premise the film gets worse in every frame. It sort of mimics the well-known story of the more historic figure, but divides it between two personalities, one young, one old. The actor playing the older one is possible the ugliest Japanese actor ever to appear in a film. The sword scenes are flimsy and poorly executed. The young Musashi goes on to star in the "Sleepy Eyes" series and he is in fact quite a good actor, but his budding talent is wasted in this farce. the plots are simple enough...duels between swordsmen for no reason other than fame. Followed by mindless revenge plots by their friends, that go nowhere and disappear. I love Japanese Samurai films, but this is pure junk. What the writer had in mind is unknown, as the film is an absolute insult to the actual legend of the magnificent Myamoto Musashi and otherwise makes the idea of telling a great story into a lampoon of itself, played with a straight face. Perhaps the poorest and lamest of the many awesome Samurai films that came out in the 1960s.
sharptongue
An improvement on the 2nd, but still not up to the high standard of the first.The story is more erratic this time. Things continue from the exact end-point of the 2nd film, at the end of the battle scene, where MM considers the lessons learned. He is there, dominating the film for the first half hour, and then, apropos of nothing in particular, abruptly disappears from the film for the next hour. Of course, he is still referred frequently by most of the other characters in his absence. During this hour, some of the familiar characters are followed and at least one crucial character is introduced - the boastful young Sasaki Kojiro, with his unusually long sword.One took quite a while to recover the flow of the story after this jolting change of pace, but the overall story begins to take even more shape during this time. Therefore, although it was perhaps not the best way to handle proceedings, things eventually worked, and I didn't find the story any less compelling for it.Otsu and Akemi are still around, and the old woman Osugi is still doggedly trying to inflict pain upon MM. The ending I found very clunky - MM does all but say "stay tuned for the next episode". Argh ! But still, I'll be watching it. Less action than either of the first two, but still pretty good.
AD
