Shogun's Shadow

I was regretting for the entire movie that I hadn’t seen this at the right age, as a boy, because back then I would have loved this dumbly entertaining, straightforward mix of incongruous elements (wuxia samurais, fencing with katanas, the magnificent seven versus thousands of soldier sword-fodder, such bad to absolutely perfect over-acting from the shogun, the detailed gore, dislocated cuts during the action, to absurdly overdone sound effects, a burning and exploding horse, almost non-stop slow motion and repeats etc.). Anyway, now however hard I try, I just can’t get over some of this; particularly the crazy scene where, completely unexpectedly (and certainly uninvited), the craziest ear-splitting eighties Japanese pop-metal starts blaring, refusing to stop for like a whole ten minutes. And if all of this sounds to you like ideal material for a lifetime guilty pleasure love affair, you are absolutely right. But only if you see it first time when you are still fourteen at latest. (06/04/2013)