Category: Cinema

A part of this view­ing list: Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion Spine #312: Masahi­ro Shin­oda’s Samu­rai Spy.

Like any good spy movie, most of the time in Samu­rai Spy the view­er does­n’t know who is who, who is what and who is where. This is good. The film also has a bit of an Ian Flem­ing flair to the whole affair; spies bang­ing oth­er spies for infor­ma­tion, for exam­ple. The film also remind­ed me very much of man­ga; it appears that Shin­o­da used tele­pho­to lens­es quite often, result­ing in shots that feel com­pressed almost to two-dimen­sion­al­i­ty. The cam­era crew must’ve been sim­ply amaz­ing though, because there are many shots that require exact adjust­ments of focus near­ly instan­ta­neous­ly, and just as many long-takes which start out in a com­pressed long shot, but end in close-up. The cam­era isn’t mov­ing, just the actors. The film is beau­ti­ful and worth watch­ing sim­ply for the shot-fram­ing, cin­e­matog­ra­phy, and cam­era work. A mas­ter­piece of tech­nique.

I think this film is also the first old Japan­ese film I’ve seen that uses spe­cial effect tech­niques that films like Crouch­ing Tiger Hid­den Drag­on owe a strong debt to. When they want to, samu­rai and nin­ja move absolute­ly silent­ly, thanks to a lack of sound track and the tac­ti­cal use of Foley to ren­der oth­er ambi­ent sounds. This works at all points, except once, where Sasuke jumps onto a roof and we see the tiles shake and dust arise, but hear noth­ing. Pret­ty much all of the char­ac­ters have a super­nat­ur­al jump­ing abil­i­ty that goes along with their stealth. These stunts are ridicu­lous­ly cool, even 40+ years after their film­ing; thanks in part, to more care­ful work with shot selec­tion and edit­ing.

The sto­ry is more sat­is­fy­ing than many spy films as well. The per­se­cu­tion of Japan­ese Chris­tians plays a small but impor­tant role through­out the film; and Sasuke’s sta­tus as a third-par­ty samu­rai rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a rel­a­tive­ly neu­tral clan, is a new and wel­come angle on the often over­played Toyotomi/Tokugawa rival­ry. I’ve con­sis­tent­ly referred to this film as a spy film, and not a samu­rai film, main­ly because it is so dif­fer­ent than most samu­rai films. There is no focus on hon­or, forth­right­ness and fair play that are typ­i­cal virtues of a samu­rai film. In Samu­rai Spy, although it is a peri­od piece, the unscrupu­lous nature of every spy [Sasuke except­ed] gives it a dis­tinct­ly mod­ern feel. Sasuke him­self isn’t a typ­i­cal hero, his cyn­i­cism regard­ing the “pre­car­i­ous peace” he has lived with for half his life also pro­vides a cer­tain per­spec­tive unbound by clan loy­al­ty. Because of this, he is able to suc­cess­ful­ly nav­i­gate his way to safe­ty, leav­ing a trail of dead on both sides behind him. For a man who feels that vio­lence should be avoid­ed, this might seems strange, until you real­ize that those that die on his sword did so of their own choice.

• Cri­te­ri­on essay by Alain Sil­ver.
• Cri­te­ri­on essay by Chris D.
• Kung Fu Cin­e­ma Review with stills.