Popular reviews

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  Review by Edgar Cochran ✝️ ★★★★ 4

  Having many things to say about this great film, I shall first provide an outline about my topics and then you can choose more easily where to focus:

  I. Its place and importance in the Nūberu Bāgu movement
  II. Commom complaints against the film
  III. Basic recommendations on how to watch the film
  IV. What makes this film very unique
  V: Personal opinion of the film

  *I.*

  Action fans: stay away. Girls and guys having a Gosha/Okamoto samurai marathon: leave this for another marathon. Shinoda is perhaps the most complex director to explore out of the Japanese New Wave. No film of his can be used as a reference for watching the next one in your watchlist; each delivery of…

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  Review by Maya ★★★★½ 15

  “Who are you, enemies or friends?”

  Samurai spy - the title gives away what the film is about, and then again, it doesn't.

  The film is not a samurai film in its authentic form. No, Shinoda wanted to go against the prevailing concepts of sword-fighting and bloody samurai films of the time. Where the intention was to portray the fight as realistically as possible, Kurosawa being the greatest example. Instead, he created a kind of ninjas who engage in battles using fluid acrobatic stunts that take place in mysterious locations. The killing itself is never really portrayed, but mostly placed in dark light or a partly covered camera angle. Because a mysterious spy noir film was what he wanted to…

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  Review by More_Badass ★★★★ 1

  Approach Samurai Spy as a chambara mystery and its clan vs clan convolutions might lose you quick. But heed that title and the year in which it was made, and Samurai Spy swiftly crystallizes into a Cold War spy noir with robes and throwing knives instead of suits and silencers. A 17th century allegory of CIA versus KGB and the pawns and opportunists in the middle, with all that entails: defectors, double-agents, agents in the cold, agents caught in frame-ups. The black-&-white compositions, contrast, and silhouettes beautifully transplant shadowy noir atmosphere to period samurai suspense and murky clan espionage. 

  Once it dawned that I was watching a classic spy film, all the parallels made the (actually simpler than expected) plot…

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  Review by SubToretto ★★★★ 1

  It may take over 30 minutes to begin to digest what is actually happening, but that doesn’t make the preceding act worthless as at this point the characters have a riveting conversation that contextualizes all the little events we’ve seen.

  Film #110 in Summer of the Red Sun- Celebrating 125 Years of Japanese Cinema

  We may have followed it precisely or just picked up crumbs by that point; but this scene allows all the audience to embrace the machinations and aims, perceived or otherwise, of the main players. It helps that Shinoda shoots this scene almost like a metaphorical fight scene, with zooms, pans and focus-switches methodically jumping from face-to-face as the questions, mysteries and explanations reveal and swirl into…

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  Review by KD_ ★★★★ 2

  Shinoda Masahiro’s SAMURAI SPY is set in the aftermath of the Battle of Sekigahara. It follows the remarkable figure of Sarutobi Sasuke (Takahashi Koji). Sasuke is elusive; he does not ally himself with the Toyotomi clan, nor does he ally himself with the Tokugawa clan. With whom his lord, the lord of the Sanada clan, allies himself doesn’t make any difference to him. It’s clear Sasuke is an independent entity, not taking any instructions from anyone. He moves around swiftly and stealthily. SAMURAI SPY, after all, is more of a ninja eiga than anything else.

  A very narratively complex film, it will be the beautiful images (courtesy of cinematographer Kosugi Masao, with Shinoda himself handling the camera as well) and Takemitsu Toru’s score that will stay with me the most.

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  Review by Filipe Furtado ★★★½

  Shinoda’s impeccable framing keeps Samurai Spy engaging even through the endless negotiation scenes. He imbues the action with a lot of atmosphere as well and his violent tableaux have a nice unreadability to them. His anti-mythmaking just produces a different form of myth.

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  Review by More_Badass ★★★★½ 1

  After double doses of ninja heists and samurai-v-ninja sieges, felt like the right time to revisit some samurai spy noir too. Now this is the kind of uniquely-crafted genre chimeras I adore. Murky Cold War cloak-&-dagger transplanted to Sengoku-era tensions; the fatalistic men and violent frame-ups of noir now cloaked in robes and fought with blades; the crisp black-&-white thrills of chambara unfolding via Shinoda’s gorgeous compositions and stylistic direction. This rewatch solidified the dramatic, suspenseful, and oozing-with-atmosphere Samurai Spy as a masterpiece of the era.

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  Review by Neill Shaughness ★★½ 4

  Criterion Challenge 2022

  #15: Watch a film in the collection from a director whose work you've never seen before.

  It took longer than I thought it would to find a criterion director I hadn't seen before. At first I was going to go with Equinox, but it turns out one of the directors of that directed Star Tours at Disney MGM studios, which I have seen.
  There are many ponderously expository conversations in Samurai Spy, which is a common problem for spy films. Some of the monologues were incredibly tedious. As a result, my attention wondered a bit and at times I lost the thread of the story.
  That said, I love the look of this movie. The photography is…

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  Review by Austin Langdon ★★★

  Sasuke should have just used his Amaterasu.

  The choreography leaves a lot to be desired I guess. And I can’t say I found deep investment in character or setting, nor can I say it built much momentum or suspense. But there is still quite a lot to appreciate here. I have seen two other Shinoda films (Pale Flower and Double Suicide) and his editing stands out as a remarkable feature of his filmmaking in them and Samurai Spy.

  The cinematography in all of them is excellent as well, especially Double Suicide. I especially appreciate his set design and blocking. I really like his style as a filmmaker but sometimes, like with Pale Flower and to a lesser degree, Samurai Spy…

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  Review by Mike D'Angelo ★★½

  41/100

  First review of the new year (though this was actually the last film I watched in 2022) seems like an apt time to remind y'all that my ratings, for all that the needlessly precise 100-point system comes across as striving to be definitive, aren't meant to reflect any even quasi-objective measure of "good" or "bad"—merely my own personal level of enthusiasm.

  (Rest of the review, along with everything else I write, available via ultra-cheap subscription. Seriously, it’s as little as $1 a month and for now that pays my rent.)

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  Review by Xebeche ★★★½

  I did not know what the fuck was going on half the time because the plot is so inconsiderately elaborate, but Samurai Spy is chock full of badass ninja set pieces and drool-worthy aesthetics. Such avant-garde imagery and editing isn't uncommon in Japanese New Wave movies, but I've never seen it so cranked in the chambara realm. It's moody edging on ethereal. Very cool stuff.

  Scavenger Hunt 69
  16/31

  Chain Reaction Challenge
  94/100

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  Review by Rembrandt Q Pumpernickel ★★

  Astonishingly beautiful and dreamlike action cut up by scenes of such confusing and interminable exposition that it must be intentional. I guess it makes the point of how boring and confusing and sideless a real spy's life is like, but I can't say I care for it.