4/5 The Story Begins
  by Bryan A. Pfleeger (Metairie, Louisiana United States)
Hiroshi Inagaki's Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto is the beginning of his great Samurai Trilogy started in 1954 and completed three years later for Toho International. The series of films has been compared to one With The Wind and to Kurasawa's Seven Samurai.

It is 1600 and Japan is in the midst of a civil war. Two friends Takezo (Toshiro Mifune) and Matahachi (Rentaro Mikuni) join the troops and wind up on the losing side of the Battle of Sekigahara. Matahachi is wounded and the friends find shelter in the home of Oko (Mitsuko Mito) and her daughter Akemi( Mariko Okada). Matahachi eventually betrays his friend and leaves with Oko after an attack by bandits. Takezo returns home to the village of Miyamoto where he is treated as a fugitive.

Takezo finds friendship with the former fiance of Matahachi,Otsu (Kaoru Yachigusa)and with a Buddist priest Takuan (Kuroemon Onoe) who believes that the rash youth needs to change his life in order to become the samurai he is destined to become. the first part of the trilogy deals with Takezo's early life and ends with the beginning of his travels in the samurai lifestyle.

The film,even though marketed as an adventure story,is in reality more of a story of spiritual growth. It is almost a zen meditation on living one's life to meet one's ultimate potential.

Also of note here is the brillient cinematography of Jun Yasumoto. His Eastmancolor compositions look as great today as they did in 1955. The Criterion disc is a rather bare bones affair however. It features only the trailer for the film as a bonus. The sound and the subtitling are quite good. The only slight problem with the transfer is that it is quite dark at times but this may be a flaw in the original material.

This film is well worth the purchase price and is a good introduction to Inagaki's work. Highly recommended.

5/5 A marvelous story and a terrific film.
  by Craig Matteson (Ann Arbor, MI)
This is a magnificent story and a terrific film. It won the Oscar(tm) for Best Foreign Film in 1954 and deserves the honored position it holds in film history. I not only recommend it, I encourage you to see it. Unless you speak Japanese, you do have to read the subtitles, but very soon you won't even be aware that you are doing it.

Toshiro Mifune plays the title character, Musashi Myamoto (a name he acquires later in the film - he starts out as a poor Samurai wannabe named Takezo). The story is set in a war torn Japan in the year 1600. Takezo decides that going off to war to join the army marching through his village is a sure way to glory and fame. He encourages his friend, Matahachi, to join him. But his friend is engaged to be married to a very poor girl named Otsu (who is taken advantage of by his horrible mother). But friendship and dreams of glory conquer love and off they go to war. Of course, it is far from glorious and their army is routed while they dig ditches. Matahachi is terribly wounded and Takezo exhibits strength and heroism to get him to a place where he can be cared for. But the two women (mother and daughter) who care for them are something you will have to see the movie to find out.

You also need to pay attention to the priest from the home village of Takezo and Matachi. He understands people very well, is quite smart, and cares for Takezo and Otsu more than either understands.

A marvelous film, as I said.

Enjoy.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson
Ann Arbor, MI


4/5 The First Of Director Hiroshi Inagaki's Samurai Trilogy!
  by Ernest Jagger (Culver City, California)
"Samurai I," starring Toshiro Mifune as first Takezo, then Miyamoto Musashi, is an excellent film into the trilogy which will conclude with the final, and best episode, "Samurai III: Duel at Ganryu Island." In this first film, Takezo (Toshiro Mifune) as he is known in the begining, [but will later be named Miyamoto Musashi], is a brash young man. As a peasant, he decides to leave his village and enter the army, which is on its way to do battle. However, he becomes despondent when his side is defeated. As he returns to his village, he has become an outcast, and when arrested for treason, he is saved by a monk from death, who tells Takezo to study the samurai code. When looking back on the episode, I realize that director Inagaki did a very good job with his plot development, as we see a brash and abrasive Takezo's fall from his lofty ambitions in the begining, to eventually emerge as a true samurai, due to the intervention of the priest Takuan.

It is the teachings of this priest that will set Takezo on the right path in life. Yet, Takezo must face many obstacles: most of which are of his own making, and of his inner self. His development into the samurai he wishes to be, and the samurai he eventually becomes is due to the efforts of the priest Takuan. From an irrational and wild young man, Takezo will some day emerge into a samurai who can hold his head up high. In the meantime, however, he aspires to be a great samurai. The character development that Hiroshi Inagaki gives to the characters in the film are very good. Otsu (Kaoru Yachigusa), who becomes loyal to Takezo, and eventually frees him and flees with him, will become central to the films plot, and her role will continue until the final episode.

However, this is a Toshiro Mifune film. Albeit, with great characters in the film itself, his character and changing nature is the heart of the films trilogy. However, I really liked the character of the priest Takuan. This first film of the trilogy allows the viewer to understand how and why Takezo is the way he is. Where he comes from in his life, and why he aspires to be a great samurai. The film succeeds in large part due to the rough hewn nature of the samurai during the Tokugawa period. The film is not complete, in that the viewer must see the changes that Takezo [later Miyamoto Musashi] must undergo in order for the film to make full sense. I recommend that you watch all three episodes before coming to any conclusions in this first installment. The questions are all answered in the films trilogy in the climatic and suspenseful final episode. This is well worth viewing, and owning. I recommend the film highly, and add that if you stick with the first two installments, and see the final episode you will not be disappointed. Highly recommended.

3/5 Alright Japanese action flick from the '50s
  by Steven Hellerstedt
The always-reliable Toshiro Mifune plays a wild young man with a strong urge to go off and fight in a local civil war. He goes, the war doesn't turn out well, and the young man Takezo (the Mifune character) ventured off with takes up with a prairie floozy and her beautiful daughter and promptly forgets all about the girl he left behind. Takezo doesn't, though, and when he returns to the village to tell Otsu of the betrayal by some prestidigitation or other he finds himself hunted by the villagers on trumped up charges of treason and proceed to hunt our young hero like a swamp dog.

Then or thereabouts a Buddhist priest enters the story and becomes the pivot point in the first installment in an epic trilogy. Will the priest prove able to break Takezo's stubborn willfulness without breaking his spirit? MIYAMOTO MUSASHI is released by Criterion and won an honorary, foreign language Academy Award in 1955. That's a pretty potent combination that's hard to resist, and I stuck this one in the player figuring maybe it is, as some have claimed, the Japanese `Gone With the Wind.'

Then I remembered I'm not all that partial to GWTW, either. Well, the `either' came after I watched MM and decided its `classic' elements eluded me. For one thing, its afflicted with first-installment-itis - it takes a whole long time for the plot to pick up momentum, and the ending has the always frustrating `to be continued' written all over it. Not only is it somewhat slow and choppy and inconclusive, its centerpiece - a climatic battle between Takezo and a forest full of angry men with long, pointy sticks - is a fizzle. It either wasn't choreographed well before filming, or the editors botched it in the cutting room, or the director didn't film enough footage for the editor to use in the first place. In any event, what ought to be a stirring, pitched battle is nothing much more than Toshiro Mifune hopping and snarling and spitting at a herd of extras who don't come within fifteen feet of him.

MIYAMOTO MUSASHI was good enough for me to recommend, just, and intriguing enough to line up a viewing of the final two installments. Kind of a mucky, dirty, hard-to-read print as well.


3/5 Pretty good, not great
  by LF (USA)
It is easy to overrate certain films, and this is one of them. Certain films, like this one, have a lot of status for some reason. This is not a great film. The story isn't absorbing enough. There are some other faults as well.

The battle scenes are unbelievable. A number of times we have one solitary fighter, either Takezo or his friend, beating off a large number of attackers. The way this is accomplished is by showing the hero spinning around, and every time he swings his sword, someone else falls. It is absurd. The men fell, in turn, because the script told them to. There is no realism in any of the battle scenes.

We also don't understand why the characters behave as they do. We just have to chalk it up to Japanese culture, or whatever. They make no sense as real people. Why did the priest treat Takezo as he did? Ya got me! Why did Takezo make the final decision he made? Ya got me again. I don't feel it.

In one scene, darling Otsu tells Takezo to wait for him, and she disappears to change her clothes. Obviously he was going to walk out on her. I thought Otsu was an absolute idiot for walking away to change her clothes, after begging him to let her accompany him. Do you think he stayed and waited for her? How foolish was that scene.

It is a fairly absorbing story, but not nearly as absorbing as the book Musashi. I can't give this film more than 3 stars.

One thing that annoys me in Amazon reviews is how often people say "the movie was great but the dvd was bad". It is a cliche already. Rate the movie. When you are talking about a classic like this one, the only permissible way to criticize it is by saying the movie is great but the dvd is bad. Well, this movie isn't great. It's pretty good. That's it.