Reviews

I had chances to watch this film twice so far, and I enjoyed it better for the second time.

These days in the U.S. movie theaters, it is rare to encounter romantic and graceful love stories that are enjoyable to women and adults. I belong to this neglected market sector in this era, dominated by fast-paced action, SFX, and horror movies for 20-something male movie-goers.

So I suppose I am not a "majority" for the movie studios business, but I am glad I can find something like this film from time to time. I noticed the slow pace of the story-telling when I first watched it, but the second time around, I was paying more attention to the details of the relationships among the various characters and their emotions, as well as the beautiful cinematography, so the slow pace did not bother me - or rather, it gave me time to enjoy the subtleties.

It is a bit of a "cheat" to use children to stir the emotions among parents, and I was totally trapped by this scheme. Natasha Richardson's expressions of the emotions to her daughter made me cry even for the first time, but at the second time, it also hit me that her suppressed behavior to Jackson (Ralph Fiennes) was to protect her daughter, and it made the human relations more fascinating - and sad - in this story.

Another example is the relationships between Jackson and Matsuda. I did not quite understand the emotional subtleties between these two men, other than that they share the same interest, the first time around. Then at the second time, I could "read" Matsuda's expressions more closely and it made me understand more what he was up to.

The same thing for the depiction of the relationships between Sofia (Richardson) and her family, too. Overall, I got an impression that the film depicts the human relationships in classic and graceful manner. I like the ending too, and that leaves a good aftertaste. I certainly don't mind watching it for the third time.

I saw this movie in Tokyo in one of the pre-showing events. It is such a huge-theme, carefully constructed movie that needs probably a few more times of viewing to fully digest for me, but my first reaction at the end of the movie was "oh, don't stop, I want to keep watching!"

There are many characters in this movie, each with a complicated background and reasons for his/her own acts. Instead of explaining all of them in detail, the movie uses "flashbacks" to imply these past facts. I enjoyed that method, but that requires a lot of imagination, and some people would never get it. Without the depth of these characters, the movie may look just confusing and/or flat. I read some negative reviews about this movie both by Japanese fans and US media, and I thought many of them stumbled on this point.

The acting of all the actors were excellent, especially the main character Sengoku, played by Hiroyuki Sanada ("The Last Samurai", "The Twilight Samurai"). He made the transition of this middle-aged petty officer into a super hero so convincing. Akira Terao made me cry so much especially at the end. Kiichi Nakai was charmingly scary, Koichi Sato was stylish, and the young Ryo Katsuji was so sharp.

I admit the technique used in this movie is not totally familiar with the US audience, who are used to watch easy-to-digest fast-food Hollywood movies. And I admit I felt some weaknesses myself - special effect was not perfect, some story lines are not convincing enough, especially the reasoning of the "traitors". But I could feel the passion of the people who made this movie, including the people at Japanese Self Defence Forces who gave the full-support to the movie shooting, and from the mid-point of the movie, I kept crying till the end. I was simply enjoying watching each scenes and excellent actors and did not want to stop watching.

I hope it will be available for international fans as well to enjoy. It is the movie for grown-ups.