Popular reviews

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  Review by Filipe Furtado ★★★

  Sprawling engrossing samurai film about the Shinsengumi and its resistence towards the Meiji Restoration. It covers a lot of territory with plenty of infighting, political maneuvers and betrayals. Masato Harada, long one of the Japan's more succesful comercial directors, helm it with a lot of attention towards how Junichi Okada samurai leaders moves through the tensions. It is a somber movie with occasional explosions of violence. Conservative revisionism done with a good deal of care.

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  Review by Brent Sacks ★★★★½

  Holy smokes. This movie is like Godfather levels of epic. Completely blown away. 

  The CGI is a bit lacking and the story is admittedly hard to follow at times, but stick with it and you’ll experience a sweeping, rich, well wrought story that apparently no one has ever seen. 

  The acting is terrific. The fight scenes are surprisingly good with a few being muddier than I would have liked. 

  I love how the story spans so many years and chronicles the rise and fall of all these characters. It does feel like a mafia movie in a lot of ways. Also tons of excellent sets, costumes, props, and location photography. This captures Japan perfectly, which might not come as a…

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  Review by hv05272004 ★★ 5

  看特映前後，遇到了追蹤已久的男同志IG 網紅與他男朋友，發現他跟他男友比想像中矮，看電影的時候一直幻想他們打炮的樣子。

  
  對，我心得就這樣，因為電影拍太快了、旁白太多話，還沒認識人物就死了，把大概10集大河劇的劇本塞在2.5小時內，資訊多到腦袋當機，只好想色色的事。

  建議熟悉日本歷史的人去看，特別是明致維新前的那段故事。

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  Review by IntakeCinema ★★½

  Unfortunately, Baragaki uses an exorbitant amount of dialogue as a crutch to tell it's story instead of giving it over to the visual medium to handle. Even with all that dialogue, the story is still almost incoherent at times and because of the dialogue the film is bloated to an almost 2 hour and 30 minute runtime. I think the first mistake the film made was trying to tell such an expansive story over the course of a single film and while I don't love when stories get stretched out over multiple films, I think that it would have been wise to take that approach with this story.

  The film does succeed in being the epic that I think it…

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  Review by Margarita M ★★★½

  I fought day after day, dreaming of someday becoming a samurai. 

  Coming from common roots, medicine-seller Toshizo Hijikata becomes one of the most renowned swordsmen fighting against the Meiji restoration. History movies such as this come with the advantage of having a lot of content to deal with. Although the real Shinsengumi existed for less than a decade, the amount of cultural and political change it witnessed and partook in, is enough for books upon books. Which is why it is the more frustrating that this film feels like little more than a pretty video essay. Most of the movie is dialogue, leaving almost no moments of silence or where visuals take lead in telling the story. The pace is…

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  Review by SGCtellandshow ★★★★

  Film 15 '23 #BaragakiUnbrokenSamurai historical/political nuance aside, great cast ensemble & casting. Solid katana action. A lot of talking & it's a chore juggling all the characters & the happenings, but the emotional beats are there. Much more digestible than Sekigahara tho.
  twitter.com/SamGorC/status/1612365502978101254?s=19

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  Review by cineronin ★★★★

  Samurai Cinema is back!
  As with any Masato Harada film, this one is gorgeous, sprawling and relentlessly informative, with superlative performances , exceptional locations and breathtakingly visceral action. This film was a dark-edged delight from beginning to end, simply some of the best and most intense action sequences put on film. " Baragaki: Unbroken Samurai " restored the code of Bushido.

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  Review by Puff ★★

  犯了一大堆歷史人物傳記片的致命錯誤，同時節奏快到我完全看不懂劇情在演啥，這也算是新型態日本歷史片類型解鎖了吧😂😂。

  片長2小時半，本以為是節奏很慢的歷史片，殊不知節奏快到像是開1.5倍速在講故事，後面完全放飛自我，你看你的我演我的，拍的流水帳同時敘事又可以放飛自我到完全不讓觀眾跟上節奏，是原先初剪拍太長，所以乾脆調倍速濃縮成2個半小時嗎？

  不過倒是看到不少春季日劇檔的演員參與其中，山田涼介、松下洙平、柴崎幸、客串的柄本明，查了一下導演正是5年前拍出關原之戰的原田真人，是關原之戰拍的太沉悶，所以這部片就改用趕火車敘事嗎？這部片應該對熟悉日本史的人比較吃香，對一般觀眾來說根本大型車禍敘事現場。

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  Review by CW_GRAY ★★★

  通俗好看又有深度的歷史電影，聚焦在新選組副長土方歲三和身旁夥伴，講述新選組的興起到沒落。它有精彩的武士之戰，有陰險的詭計內鬥，也有一定篇幅的情愛戲碼，除了重現歷史戰役，也不外乎追問何為真正的武士道、訂立的規則能否被情感影響、執著於規則又有什麼後果？觀眾是可透過電影去挖掘土方歲三的複雜性與歷史的。

  但取材的脈絡不短，故以訪談方式娓娓道來，可預料到的戲與戲之間的嫌隙、觀感的流水帳，是沒有避免掉的問題，然而有因此讓繁雜的事件有較簡單的切入點，並非全然缺陷。總體來說，《燃燒的劍》是部能看得過癮的歷史電影，製作精良，演員出色，又特別喜歡山田涼介的表演，只可惜尾韻稍嫌不足。

  （觀影前自己有小小補上相關歷史，雖仍不敢說貫通角色情節，但有幫助，若沒有相關背景應也能懂70%左右）

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  Review by Michael M.

  Well, that's a little bit tricky. I watched it, I enjoyed it, but the Japanese that was used in the film was quite hard to understand.
  As far as I can tell, it's a pretty common story of the rise and inevitable fall of one of the Shinsengumi (played by Junichi Okada), who fought the Meiji restoration. Of course there's a lot of fighting and some love, so everything as expected. Besides that it looks really good, doesn't use much CGI (but if they use it, it looks quite crappy), the characters seem quite fun and the action is mostly really good, sometimes I wished for a little slower editing, because some moment were a bit hard to follow.
  So…

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  Review by rongyu96 ★★

  想吐槽的太多。最過分的是在篇幅不夠的情況下給阿雪添了太多戲份，池田屋都要給阿雪切reaction看的要吐了（原著這里阿雪甚至還沒出場）我是覺得副長是很難通過一個故事去體現其複雜性和悲劇性的，他的人氣歸根結底還是建立在新選組（特別是試衛館時代）的人物關係性上。如果為了趕進度，而對試衛館時代一帶而過，使得原田永倉藤堂阿一面目模糊，山南和源桑（又是老爺爺演）見縫插針，電影就會淪為無高潮的巨型流水賬（真的沒想到會在池田屋臉盲，在油小路毫無波動）本歷史飯確實一邊挑剔一邊在興奮，但對於其他人大概就是一場折磨。一開始就無理由好鬥且毫不風流（電影裡不存在佐繪）的副長實在是太陌生了。與此相比，局長、總司、鴨叔在設定上中規中矩，演的也符合期待。小規模冷兵器交戰濫用移動鏡頭除了令人頭暈不明白有什麼其他作用。