Crazy Samurai Musashi (2020) Review

rating: *****

the story: One samurai versus four hundred.

review: Audacious, assured storytelling is my favorite kind. As such, it’s tough for me to experience something like Crazy Samurai Musashi (also known as Crazy Samurai: 400 vs 1) and not fall instantly in love with it, which is of course what happened.

The showcase of the movie is one take that stretches for nearly the whole feature, an hour-plus of continuous fighting for the eponymous figure, with a few grateful breaks. If you’re going to do something like that, you need to keep things interesting, and the assured directing of Yuji Shimomura does exactly that:

The action, framing, scenery, and score are constantly shuffled.

As the showdown continues, Musashi tires but never gives up. It’s what the movie needs to propel it to even greater heights, a believability that can sometimes be lost in such artful presentation. Long takes, whether real or implied, can sometimes be dismissed as gimmicks, especially if pushed to feature-length, as if that’s most of what’s being achieved. This is an experience that takes that into account, and pulls the audience into the drama.

The story seems simple enough, and barely there, but sometimes simplicity is exactly what is needed. Far too often filmmakers rely on the same decisions others have made, however executed. Crazy Samurai has had a complicated reception, I think, because it breaks so many rules, expectations viewers tend to use as crutches. Yet it remains vivid throughout, telling a complete story, even as it swerves away from the expected, dives into myth at the end. It’s a samurai John Wick at that point. This is not a bad thing! All you really need to know is that this one guy probably has more honor than all his hundreds of opponents combined, a point suggested but hardly belabored. 

And that may be the best thing to say about it. It’s a movie whose appeal seems obvious, too obvious. But ends up being more than earned, a new blueprint in a seemingly exhausted template. For a movie that took a long time to have an official release, it has become, officially, my favorite of 2020.