Sengoku Jieitai (1979) July 19, 2007
Posted by Cal in : Action, Sci-Fi, War, 1970s films , trackbackDirector: Mitsumasa Saito Cast: Sonny Chiba, Jun Eto, Toshitaka Kadokawa Territory: Japan Production Company: Kadokawa Haruki Jimusho
AKA Time Slip
A group of Japanese infantry are out on manoeuvres one night when they find themselves sharing a surreal psychedelic experience. Once the dust clears, the soldiers are shocked to find the nearby power plant has vanished and they are being observed by a group of horsemen dressed as Samurai. What they take to be an historical re-enactment turns decidedly sinister when they are ambushed by about a hundred of these figures, and the arrows they are firing are far from fake! Lieutenant Iba (Sonny Chiba) takes charge of his men, and along with a helicopter, a tank, a small military boat and a truck armed with a carbine, he cuts a bloody swath through what he begins to realise is 16th century Japan. The soldiers theorise that they have experienced a “Time Slip”, a kind of chronological earthquake that has transported them back 400 years to a particularly turbulent point in Japan’s history, with clans fighting each other for dominance in a country torn apart by civil war.
Sengoku Jieitai is an odd mix of Sci-Fi, war and action. The first thirty minutes move at a blinding pace, with hardly a pause for breath. One of the highlights is the Time Slip effect itself – this is none of your sudden white flashes of light and bang! you’re back in the 16th century. What we end up with is something so visually striking that my usual two-syllable vocabulary cannot do it justice.
After that, things begin to slow down a little and it’s here that the problems become evident. Sengoku Jieitai is often so episodic in nature that it feels sometimes like a TV mini-series bolted together to make a feature film. It also has some plot threads that seemingly end up going nowhere, and some unnecessary flashbacks and pop video style montages of people left behind which adds to the disorientation. Furthermore, only Iba and the Samurai Kagetora are given any kind of individual personality – the rest just seem like cardboard cutouts. Indeed, one character’s only contribution seems to be to utter the line “I need a piss” at every opportunity. It is clear that the film is in serious need of a little trimming, and it’s interesting to note that the international version was about 30 minutes shorter than this version, and I assume it did away with a lot of the extraneous material.
Right, griping over, what is the rest like? Occasionally, it’s bloody brilliant. Sonny Chiba is great and proves himself to be more macho than usual as Lieutenant Iba. He abseils from a helicopter (which would have been really special were it not for the fact that he did the exact same thing in Golgo 13), takes a very dangerous-looking ride in the back of a jeep going through some very rough terrain, and generally kicks, shoots and slices his way through the movie. Even being shot with an arrow is a minor inconvenience. His reaction to a mutiny is also as bloody and final as you’d expect from a Chiba movie.
You’ve got to laugh at the gung-ho approach to the Sci-Fi angle as well. In time-travel films we are constantly given dire warnings about altering the course of history. So does Lieutenant Iba heed these warnings? Not a bit of it! He chooses a side and ploughs right into the civil war, his rationale being that the upset to history will cause another “Time Slip” and bring them all back to the 20th century.
The most impressive aspect of the film is the epic battle scenes, which employ hundreds of horses and extras, all dressed in period costume. The scope and execution of these scenes are sometimes breathtaking. Of course, the Samurai are no match for 20th century hardware, which cuts though them like a hot knife through butter, but the final confrontation is thrilling to watch. Definitely a film to check out if you think it might appeal to you.
This film goes by many names so I’ve decided to use the Japanese title. It’s currently available in the UK under the terrible title of GI Samurai, but appears to be the full version (minus 40 seconds for “illegal horsefalls”), which is the version reviewed here.
Comments»
no comments yet - be the first?