G.I. Samurai

G.I. SAMURAI (1981)

This is a retitled and dubbed Sonny Chiba movie (that's pretty easy to find pretty cheap in Tower Video, Suncoast and the like) with a great premise; a whole squad of soldiers, tank, helicopter, P.T. boat and all, end up thrown through a
time warp to their country's past. Since they're Japanese, this means Feudal Japan. There is very, very little plot here, and it
has a very enjoyably cold-blooded approach: the solidiers figure they've got the guns and artillery, so they should make
themselves Lords of Japan (forget how it's absurdly rationalized in the dubbing, it's what they decide to do). Alas, they
haven't counted on the strength and fearlessness of their own ancestors. Chiba plays the leader of the timelost squadron and also choreographs the great fight scenes. I wish I had seen this film when I was thirteen (which is probably the optimal age for it). The movie is really well-budgeted; if the movie had been made in America, it would have been a low-budget affair and you never would have seen more than ten guys on the screen at once. This has, like you would hope, scores of horsemen riding over the hill and swarming the machine-gunning soldiers. The battle scenes go on a long, long time. I was both exhausted and exhilarated by the end of the movie. Although it's a subject that I don't know a ton about, the movie really works in depicting the sort of military fetishizing that was once (and perhaps still is) such a part of the Japanese national character; the squadron is refreshingly quick to gun down potential ancestors and Chiba's character is obviously loving the whole idea of fighting alongside, and against, actual Samurai.

image nicked from the video cover (doesn't do justice) I should warn you: I don't know if this is still regular practice in Japan, but this movie is filled with horse wirepulls. Hollywood has, thank god, stopped this once common practice of getting a horse to fall by tying a wire to a rear leg and yanking it when the horse is in mid-run (you onlly see it in older films now) but this movie has scenes where the horse's back leg flies up so high that not only is it obvious that there is major wirepulling going on, but you can't help but think that the horse was probably crippled for life as a result. A really icky thing, the wirepull; it's the only thing I don't like about what I'm starting to realize is one of my all-time favorite cheesy B-movies.

More about this movie

More about Sonny Chiba, badass (and a great movie site overall)