Best movie of this year hands down!

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Film Review: "Kagemusha" (1980)Winning the "Palme d'Or" shared with Bob Fosse's "All That Jazz" (1979) on May 23rd 1980 at Cannes Film Festival in its 33rd edition, director Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998) accumulates all his directorial signatures since "Rashomon" (1950) to adapt an originally screen-written masterpiece on thief impersonating a dying king-like figure alongside Japanese moviestars Tsutomu Yamazaki and Tatsuya Nakadai in a legendary double role as medieval warlord Shingen Takeda as the title-given imposter to take his place in a troublesome kingdom to tragic as high-suspense drama indulging ends, when well-researched art directions by ingenious Kurosawa-collaborator production designer Yoshiro Muraki (1924-2009) delivers with visual splendors to be hypnotized from that even international distribution-securing producers George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola must have admit that "Kagemusha" remains world cinema at its best to be discovered again in an all-too-fast moving environment of speeding visuals from any digital device coming our way these days.Copyright 2018 Cinemajesty Entertainments LLC

A petty thief is pulled from crucifixion and made to be the double of the ruthless powerful warlord Shingen Takeda. Both the warlord and his brother Nobukado are impressed. It's 1573. Shingen is mortally wounded at a siege. He orders his generals to hide his death for at least 3 years and not to advance from their domain. When he dies in secret, Nobukado proposes to use the double. However the double is uncontrollable and he discovers the dead body. Meanwhile spies are looking for the truth.Director Akira Kurosawa has made a meticulous movie. It is big. There are lots of costumes. The battles have lots of participants. It's real. It is 3 hours and lots of it is very static. It's very old school in that respect. The action isn't very visceral. It is more cerebral. What I mean is that it is visions of formation. There are few actual fights and little blood or gore. The big battle is seen not in the action but in the reaction of the people seeing the action. It is a different way of doing action. It's poetic but also a bit sterile.

Kurosawa said it himself, this is a film that was designed as a dress rehearsal for "RAN", and you can see it. Kagemusha has a lot of experimentation with shots, colors, and a fairly loose editing style with a kind of free form structure. It's essentially a giant experimentation for what could work in a film, and what doesn't. The style is fairly rushed as well. The kind of care or calculated artwork that we'd normally get from a Kurosawa film is simply not here.That's not to say that the film is bad, because it isn't, but the kind of careful craftsmanship that we're so used to with a Kurosawa has been given some high octane fuel, and as such we don't get shots that linger too long on one subject. Not shots that are muted in tone. We get lots of moving shots as well; pans, a few subtle zooms, and the occasional tracking shot. This isn't normal for a Kurosawa film. Again, here we have a kind of "let's shoot this to see what we've got" kind of movie. The culmination of which we will eventually see in the film he shot afterwards; "RAN"."Kagemusha" is also a bit of a departure for Kurosawa in that it deals with real historical events and characters. Most of the films I've seen by Kurosawa have dealt with traditional fiction. But here we a kind of docudrama, albeit altered for dramatic effect and for the big screen. Again, not such a big deal here, because the film does work.Lots of people heap praises on this film, and where I admit to its craftsmanship, it's essentially a preparation for another film. Watch it for what it's worth and enjoy what you can.

Akira Kurosawa's 180-minute, 1980 "comeback" film "Kagemusha" is one of the director's most ambitious films. Like I already stated, it clocks in at 180 minutes, but the film is never once boring. Having watched his later "Ran" (1985) yesterday and then having watched this movie today, "Kagemusha" is very much a "dress rehearsal" for "Ran" since it can be seen that many ideas/themes from this film were later used on "Ran." (Having watched both movies, however, I can conclude that "Ran" is the better movie.) "Kagemusha" (which means "shadow warrior") and is set over the course of a two-year period between 1573 and 1575 in Japan, concerns a petty, unkempt thief (Tatsuya Nakadai) who is plucked from imminent execution to be the double for the 16th-century warlord Shingen Takeda (also played by Nakadai), due to his striking resemblance to him. When Shingen unexpectedly expires, the thief is forced to take his position as leader of the Takeda Clan. This could have been an amusing comedy, but Kurosawa was too smart for that, and his scope of the material went way beyond what would typically be silly Hollywood comedic theatrics, like a comedy about role-/body-swapping (even though Kurosawa sought financial backing from American filmmakers George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola - two well-known admirers of his from the United States who are also well-known admirers of his impressive body of work over the decades). The main theme of "Kagemusha" is the battle between illusion and reality: The Double effectively deceives a great many people with the illusion that he is the real Shingen (including his grandson, mistresses, and sworn arch-rivals), and the real Shingen's generals (including his brother Nobukado - played by Tsutomu Yamazaki - who also bears an uncanny resemblance to his late brother) must keep up the elaborate charade - while also somehow managing to keep The Double out of trouble and keep away anyone from discovering their ruse. The film ends with an epic, large-scale massacre marking the downfall of the Takeda Clan, but the magic there is that we never actually see any real combat. Instead, we rely on the horrified reactions of the characters as they witness the unrelenting bloodshed of battle. It's a truly powerful moment in a film that never ceases to cause wonder and stir up strong emotions about the enormous "responsibilities" that come with such elaborate deception and the swift fall from power.10/10