‘Age Of Samurai: Battle for Japan’ Review: Feuding Lords And Their Fighters
WALL STREET JOURNAL
The ostensible subjects of “Age of Samurai: Battle for Japan” are dubbed “the mounted knights of old Japan” and while a properly romantic description, it falls a bit short: The sword-wielding martial artists of the feudal era (1185-1868) have not only taken up residence in the Western imagination but created ornate, interlacing connections between pop cultures East and West. Akira Kurosawa, for instance, who was a student of John Ford, portrayed his heroes like the gunslingers of the Old West, or even Prohibition gangsters. Detective novelist Dashiell Hammett’s 1929 “Red Harvest” was the basis for Kurosawa’s “Yojimbo,” which in turn inspired Sergio Leone’s “A Fistful of Dollars,” which inspired the Bruce Willis movie “Last Man Standing.” Beneath all the intersecting fictional mayhem lay feudal roots. Most of us samurai-movie fans just don’t know where or what they are.
