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Plot: An American boxer is hired to transport an antique sword to Japan. Once there, he is inmediately kidnapped and finds out he was carrying a fake and acting as a decoy. Narrowly scaping death, he contacts his employer, who tells him there are two different swords and that his family has been fighting over them for decades.
Comments: Being sort of a Frankenheimer fan, I wasn't exactly in a hurry to check out this one. After all, it was filmed during one of his career' rougher patches, and it seemed pretty much a "Yakuza" knock off lucky enough to count with Toshiro Mifune in a villanous turn.
And well, that's exactly what it is. But it's terrific fun and a very effective film. The violence, for instance, it's surprisingly vivid, and that helps us to take the whole twin swords stuff more seriously than we should. And then there's the script by John Sayles, which does a serviceable job with what essentially is a routine plot. The two branches of the family fighting over the swords, for instance, are rather different. One is traditional, uses swords, arrows and ninja stuff, while the other is westernised and employs any advantage technology has to offer.
And then there are two terrific bits that make the movie memorable. One is the training Scott Glenn has to endure to become a member of the traditional family. It involves stuff like cutting bamboo with a sword, alright, but also more funny stuff like spending three days in a hole of the ground without food or drink. The image of Glenn trying to eat a beettle is priceless.
The second terrific bit is an action packed assault to a skyscraper which acts as the film's big action finale. It's wonderfully staged, very violent, and it culminates in a terrific swordfight between Glenn and Mifune. And mind you, you've never seen anything like this before. It's not an stylised, graceful, "Crouching tiger, hidden dragon"-like fight, no, but a vicious, no-nonsense street fight in which samurai swords, fists and office supplies are employed to subdue the enemy. Musashi would have been horrified, but I cheered.