Reviews

Fantastic telling of the classic Japanese tale of the 47 Ronin. Very good camera work and quality. Great costumes and scenery as well. I was spellbound throughout the entire movie which is very long by the way. In the review it was stated there was great samurai swordplay but there really was very minimal swordplay and it wasn't even all that good. This certainly is no complaint as I feel it was one of the finest classical Asian movies I have seen. It seems to a be a fair representation of samurai culture and has some very good lessons in Japanese traditions and cultural expectations. The main thing I liked about it was the setting up of the plot .. it wasn't just an action thriller type of flick ... it had numerous twists and turns with a lot of dialogue that always seemed to lead somewhere unexpected.

The content is what is to be expected of a 1974 Kung Fu Flick.... however I have seen much better filming on Kung Fu Flicks from as far back as 1966. The night scenes are almost unintelligible they are so dark. I had a very tough time following the vast amount of nighttime scenes. The copy I had had 2 sets of subtitles and also, strangely enough, 2 sets of voice-overs.... both seem to be Chinese but different dialects. That made the audio difficult to follow which was fine as I don't speak Chinese. The subs were very difficult to read as well. Both main actors are in numerous other movies from that time and were very good in this film as well.