User Reviews

Very dry dead pan comedy has a deeply moving sting in it's tale.

The plot of the film has a sad sack samurai trying to make a prince laugh. He has 30 days and 30 attempts to do it or else he will have to commit suicide. What looks like a one note film flips in the final minutes to be revealed to be about something else entirely The whys and wherefores are of what is going on is not what you think at the start.

Like the directors earlier film SYMBOL (and his other films as well) this film requires that the audience member be patient and wait for the whole film to unfold. If you get bored or give up the pay off will be lost. The fact that the directors films are not easy to explain I think keeps people away.

On the other hand if you are willing to work with the film and wait for the pay off I think you'll be greatly rewarded. I was moved to tears.

A truly great film.

I think there are some elements of truth to what the reviewer above says. I, too, wondered if the picture was going anywhere after the shaky start. A lot of the humor consists of loopy sight gags, and the protagonist hardly says a word throughout the picture.

A toothless samurai with no sword, a fugitive with a little girl tagging along behind him, he is captured when he wanders into the fiefdom of an unsympathetic Lord. The Lord tells him that, because he is a dishonored samurai he must commit seppuku (off himself) in 30 days, unless he can make his son, the Prince, smile. The Prince's mother recently died and he is grief-stricken.

Here proceeds a succession of sight gags, one a day, to make the Prince smile - but no luck. Some are funny, some not so, and some very elaborate, and I agree that American and Japanese funny bones must be in different places. The 30 day sequence of slapstick was as remarkable as it was noteworthy.

But at some point during the story I began to realize that Noki, the doomed samurai, had a death wish, that he didn't want to be saved. He apparently felt dishonor at his own wife's death as he was unable to save her, abandoned his sword, and wandered about. At about this same point, the movie was taken over by his 8 year old daughter, Tae, who tagged along behind and became his conscience and his cheerleader. I can't remember when I have seen a better acting job by a child, as she was exceptional and figuratively towered over everyone else in the cast.

This is basically a black comedy which nearly ends as a tragedy, but at the very end is uplifting and in a spiritual vein. The whole movie fell into place in the last twenty minutes and I came away with a good feeling. I hope I was right - after all, I'm from the West.

are we standing on the same planet, dude? are you sure that the western sense of humor is the same as that of the Japanese? for years i have been watching lot of clueless moronic films made in hong kong, china, Hollywood or even from europe, but this Japanese film is definitely on top of such list. yeah, maybe there's something inexplainable Japanese humor that this film's screenplay writer had tried to deliver, or those Japanese producers suddenly pulled their heads out of the sand and started reading stupid comic books drawn by those Otaku宅男 or ハウス宅女 who all lived in their iron-clad Ivory towers, dreamed up weird and illogic scenarios, plots, storyline to fool themselves and entertain those brain-dead generation. so they think this screenplay of 'Scabbard Samurai' was a rare find and god send. on the other hand, the production of this film was quite serious, serious about the settings, the scenes, the props, costumes, the casting job....almost all stuff involved in a serious production were well prepared. the film came out very smoothly and very easy to watch but, WTF?! it's absolutely stupid and worthless! don't tell me how great this film is, how you saw it and grasped the whole nine yards of the meaning of this film, how you consider it's the milestone that the Japanese movie industries finally primed itself from puberty to maturity. NO! because there's nothing in it but absurdity and childishness. it's just like a worthless Japanese 3rd level comic book, mixed up with super nature, traditional Japanese samurai genre, ghost story, parenthood, merciless tyranny....whatever you might dream up, it's in the movie, the only thing they didn't throw in was 'child abuse', dude.

this comic samurai kept running, three mysterious assassins tried to kill him without probable causes, cut him from the back (the blood ejected like oil well in Texas), shot him at the head from behind (the blood exploded like fireworks on 4th of july!), snapped and broke his neck from behind. yeah, just like general MacArthur said: "old soldier never die but faded away...." this ugly comedian samurai never died, but later, mysteriously died by his seppuku. in order to let people believe this samurai legend really lived and exited in Japanese history, the director decided to post a tombstone with his name on it which is still on the street corner of wherever you think it is.

what a waste of money and time on both sides, the production team and we, the viewers. don't try to fool me and others that you, only you understood what's going on to prove how intelligent and how deep you are. you should know that when you look down upon the garbage littered around your feet, or dogs' crap, you know it's garbage, and you know it's so stink that you should not step on it. oh, what a waste.