The Dagger of Kamui (1985)
The blu-ray of this film literally came in the post yesterday, so I thought I might as well watch it tonight. I have had the film on DVD for a long time, and watching a couple of years back I realised it was really due for a remaster. The film begins right at the end of the Edo era and focuses on a boy named Jiro who lives in small village. Coming home one day, he discovers his adoptive mother and sister have been murdered. The villagers wrongly accuse him, so he escapes with the two items found with him by his adoptive parents; a dagger and the scrap of cloth on which his birth parents wrote his name, and to ask whoever found him to take care of him.
While hiding in the forest from the villagers, encounters a Buddhist monk named Tenkai who is part of the Shogunate’s secret police. He leads him to man whom he says killed his adoptive mother and sister, and goads him into delivering the final blow to kill him after the Shogunate’s men take the man down. Afterwards Tenkai takes him to his temple in order to train him as a ninja. After years of training, Jiro leaves on a journey to discover the who his birth family was. However everything up to this point has been an elaborate scheme by Tenkai in order for Jiro to complete the task he set Jiro’s father to complete.
In the late 1970s, Kadokawa Shoten got into the film business. More less this was to take control over film adaptations of their novels. In the 1980s they produced several popular films from their line of novels including some massive hits and big budget epics such as “G.I. Samurai”, “Sailor Suit and Machine Gun”, “Satomi Hakkenden” and the big budget, mostly English language scripted tilt at the foreign film market, the post-apocalyptic sci-fi epic, “Virus”.
Like those films, “The Dagger of Kamui” is based on a set of Kadokawa Shoten published novels by sci-fi novelist Tetsu Yano with illustrations by Moribi Murano, possibly better known as being the director of “Unico in the Island of Magic” and character designer for “Combattler V”. As I assume Kadokawa wanted an epic looking film, they hired Rintaro as the director. I know a lot of people take issue with his directorial work as he can prioritise spectacle over story, and honestly he does that in this film. The film does look absolutely gorgeous though (especially with Moribi Murano’s character designs) and includes several amazing fight sequences.
The story is also quite epic; spanning several years, two continents, the defeat of the Tokugawa shogunate, a trip through America’s wild west, a hunt for Captain Kidd’s treasure and a cameo from Mark Twain. Look, it is a bit bonkers to be honest. But with Rintaro as director, he mostly distracts us from a lot of implausibility of what is going on with those eye popping visuals. I did however find Tenkai’s years long plot to manipulate Jiro beyond believability at times. I did try suspended my disbelief at what was going on, but found it hard at times.
The film is slightly long at 133 minutes. I really think it could have done with a bit of trimming. I felt a fair few of the sub plots didn’t really add to film and really could have been jettisoned. I also felt the entire wild west section was quite clichéd and didn’t feel of the same quality as the rest of the film. It felt like the only real research done for that section of the film was a couple of John Ford westerns. Summing up, I cannot deny the film isn’t visually stunning. It just looks brilliant. The soundtrack is also quite amazing, blending a lot of Japanese traditional sounds with modern (1980s) rock into something really unique. But look, it is a fantastic piece of entertainment despite it’s flaws. I possibly won’t watch it again for while though.
