There's cheese-ball fun to this 1979 misfire, an American-Japanese coproduction made to cash in on Shogun-mania. Richard Boone (in his last role) plays the real-life Commodore Perry, who ended centuries of Japanese isolation by signing a treaty with a resolute shogun (Toshiro Mifune) in 1854. Against the historical backdrop is the fictional adventure of a Yankee officer (a stiff and stilted Frank Converse) who pits American gumption against samurai swordsmanship to recover the sacred Bushido Blade. Sonny Chiba's dynamic presence as a warrior prince helps energize the rudimentary fight choreography and the low budget shows through in undernourished set pieces. But the pace never lets up, and helping distract from Converse's crippling lack of charisma are the solid supporting cast, among them half-Japanese female samurai Laura Gemser, imprisoned sailor James Earl Jones, and Mike Starr as the burly bosun who bonds with a sumo wrestler in a tussle that bridges cultural and verbal barriers. --Sean Axmaker
Spotlight customer reviews:
Customer Rating: Summary: Yuk! Comment: How can you make a movie with the extra cool Toshirô Mifune... and have it be this bad? Customer Rating: Summary: Yeesh! This film is embarrassing. Comment: "A swashbuckling Samurai saga that beats SHOGUN!" - Star-Bulletin
This grand statement must be about the heavily edited 2 hour version of Shogun. The original television miniseries is as much of a revelation compared to that film as eating sushi is to fish sticks from "The Gorton's Fisherman."
All you have to do is sit through the first act to realize that you just opened a huge can of worms. The second act doesn't really do much to hold your attention while the third act felt, more or less, like a real letdown.
Sure, the film was supposed to end tragically, in a way, but "The Last Samurai" did a much better job at it, even though it had its elements of Westernizing a story that is supposed to be richly Japanese.
Even the Shogun miniseries had this problem of Westernizing, but efforts were made to keep that to a minimum to where the average viewer could experience a respectful depiction of Japanese culture while being able to understand the story (read the original novel if you want more depth of the culture through the eyes of a Westerner). Alas, "The Bushido Blade" makes no discernible effort to preserve such an experience; it is so lopsidedly Western that it seems to mock Eastern ideals.
Then again, what more could you expect with this kind of film from the likes of Rankin-Bass?
I KID YOU NOT!
This film was produced by the same group of guys who also brought you the famous stop-motion "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" from the 1960s and the animated "Thundercats" from the 1980s! Even the music is Rankin-Bass fare, being composed by none other than Maury Laws!
This film made one thing utterly clear: Arthur Rankin, Jr., who served as producer, should have stuck with making children's fare.
Rankin-Bass did a better job of bring Yukon Cornelius to life in stop-motion than Commodore Matthew Perry in live action (ironic, considering that Richard Boone, the actor to play the part, succumbed to lung cancer shortly after the film was made). Customer Rating: Summary: Samurai vs Yankee? Comment: In support of the previous reviewer's comments, those writers who sneer at the very idea that a western sabreur could triumph over a Samurai are being sadly and deludedly unpatriotic (not a quality usually associated with Americans, let it be said).
In fact, there are a number of accounts dating from this period of Samurai being embarrassed by the skill of western opponents - and some of these are Japanese accounts. One may speculate that it was simple culture-shock, but it remains true all the same.
As for the film, it's no great shakes, but the fight is credited to a Japanese fight director, and if this is the case he deserves brownie points for a decent bit of difficult choreography. Customer Rating: Summary: A fascinating event, worthy of a far better film. Comment: The meeting between Commodore Perry's flotilla, and the Japanese has always been one of the most fascinating events of history, as far as I am concerned. It really is a pity that it is something that has never been done well on film. This film is no exception. The first official contact between the United States and Japan is used here as a setting for a pulp adventure story. If you keep this in mind, and don't do into this with overly high expectations, this is a reasonably enjoyable picture. It's an adventure film, nothing more. But anyone who expects high art or historical accuracy is sure to be disappointed. I do wish, though, that someone would make a historically accurate film about this pivotal and fascinating historical event. It's a pity this film isn't that movie, since Richard Boone does make a good Commodore Perry.
I must say a word, however, to those who sneer at the very idea that an American military officer of the 19th century could even hope to be a match for a samurai in swordsmanship. The idea is not as farfetched as you might imagine. In the first place, not all Western swords are the inferior trash imagined. Nor are katanas lightsabers. Some 19th century Western swords were mass produced blades of indifferent quality. Others were very well made weapons of very fine steel (and usually less brittle and prone to chipping than Japanese swords, even if they wouldn't hold an edge so well as a superbly made katana). Not every samurai's sword was a Masamune masterpiece. The Japanese, even in the feudal period, were no strangers to mass produced, lesser quality blades. Nor was every samurai a master swordsman (any more than every Wild West cowboy was an expert gunfighter). One must remember that for the samurai, the sword was only one of three major weapons, along with the bow, and the yari (a thrusting spear) -- and was in fact, the least of the three. In fact, the sword really did not even become the premier weapon of samurai culture and reach its cult status until the mid to late 17th century when the period of civil wars ended. It is instructive to note that the expression so associated with bushido is "the Way of the horse and bow", not "the Way of the sword." By the same token, Western military officers could also be master swordsmen. The sword had almost reached the very end of its use as a military weapon in the Western world, but it was not quite dead yet, and there were still a number of schools that instructed students in its use at that time. Nor are Western styles of swordsmanship so vastly inferior to the style of swordsmanship practiced in Japan. In general, the average samurai of the 19th century WAS indeed far more likely to be a master swordsman than the average Western military officer. But the idea that an American officer of that period couldn't possibly possess a level of skill with a blade equal to that of a 19th century samurai is not quite accurate either. Those who dismiss the western martial arts so blithely are usually those who know nothing about them. Customer Rating: Summary: Worst Samurai Film Ever Comment: I am a big fan of samurai films and Japanese cinema. Toshiro Mifune is my favorite actor. I own about sixty or so samurai and/or mifune movies. With that said, I purchased Bushido Blade in hopes that it would be tolerable. I was sadly mistaken. Don't let your curiousity get the better of you and your money. The plot is missing, the acting is terrible (except for Mifune, who speaks English in this film without understanding the language, yet he is dubbed anyway), and the quality is unbearable. In one part, a US naval officer beats a samurai in a sword fight. Give me a break!
