Samurai Fury - Movie Review

The Movie: Samurai Fury

The Director: Irie Yu

The Cast: Oizumo Yo, Tsutsumi Shinichi, Nagao Kento, Matsumoto Wakana

The Story: In plague-ravaged 15th century Japan, rebel Hasuda Hyoe plots against an indifferent shogun. He faces former friend Honekawa Doken in a battle for Japan's future.

The Rating: 7 / 10

The Review:

I always love a good Japanese historical epic, they're more often than not filled with lots of emotional drama, political intrigue, and big action sequences so I was pretty excited to check this movie out. Japan's history is filled with conquest and war and turmoil so there's always a lot of interesting content to draw from and plenty of heroes to honor with these types of stories. This movie is set in 15th century Japan and the events that unfold aren't really well known although, after doing a bit of research afterwards, I learned that they were essential to some pretty big stuff that came after.

The story is set in Kyoto which is a city I have actually been to! Of course, it was a completely different world back then but it was still pretty cool to have some references in the movie that were a little familiar. Director Irie Yu plants a tried and true formula right in the middle of his movie with an elder master type person saving a child and taking them on as an apprentice who of course eventually becomes just as strong and as skilled by the time everything is said and done. In this case, the formula works very nicely and the rest of the story expands out from there.

If you're reading this, there's a good chance you want to know how good the action is because that's a big reason why we watch these types of movies, right? For my part, I really enjoyed all of it, there was plenty to enjoy here with big battles and lots of creative fighting styles. The apprentice's training is also really fun with some techniques I had never seen before and they really put the character to the test. The final battle meets the epic label head on with the city of Kyoto playing a big role in how everything pans out.

The heroes are all appropriately heroic and the bad guys are all very evil and it's interesting to see how a story from so far back in history can be such a metaphor for modern times. The main issue of the story involves oppression and population control through excessive taxation and forcing people into labor camps to pay off the ensuing unrealistic tax debts. Seeing all of this in the movie just shows how the people in power have been using the same playbook and, unfortunately, they probably always will. The good news is, there will always be heroes who may never get the recognition they deserve, but they end up making the biggest difference in changing the course of history for the better.

Samurai Fury doesn't break any new ground when it comes to innovating the art of film making and it really didn't need to. The story is solid, the fight scenes are great, and the historical context is something we need to see, and all of it is stuffed into a big pile of high flying, sword swinging action so yeah, I really enjoyed this movie. Go check it out if you have the chance.