Samurai Commando: Mission 1549

Sometime all it takes is a title or premise to make a film. Samurai Commando: Mission 1549 is a Sci-fi Military Action Time Travel Historical Samurai Drama film. I’ll admit the title alone, in all its silliness, was enough to get me interested, but thankfully I found that the movie was earnest and enjoyable enough to live up to that title. It won’t be for everybody, with its static filmmaking, thinly written characters, oddly straight take on its plot and shoddy CGI effects, but beyond all that it’s a fun little adventure movie.

The Japanese army are performing an experimental test of an electromagnetic shield designed to protect military soldiers and equipment. The test goes awry when everything within the shield radius, including a platoon of armed soldiers led by Colonel Matoba, heavy artillery, tanks and helicopters, are transported hundreds of years into the past to a battlefield in Sengoku period Japan where they’re attacked by Samurai. Where they once stood in the present is a grassy field that, based on soil samples, dates back to the year 1549. Three days later there’s another event returns the field to the past, but brings a wounded Samurai, Shichibei, to the present.

Two year later, temporal black holes have begun appearing across Japan, causing widespread havoc. The military believe that the missing platoon have altered the course of history, which is destroying the present. To stop this they begin Operation Romeo, a rescue mission to retrieve the missing soldiers and hopefully restore the present. They conscript former soldier Kashima into their team due to his past experience working with Matoba, while displaced Samurai Shichibei comes to return home. But on arrival they find that Colonel Matoba and his platoon have taken control, with Matoba taking the place of warlord Oda Nobunaga, using his historical knowledge and future technology to change the past and take over Japan and the world.

It’s a fun little adventure film, though it had an oddly familiar feel to me. The types of characters (particularly the reluctant military hero), the focus on the military personnel and equipment, some of the cast and even the way it was shot reminded me of the Godzilla movies of the 90s (minus the giant lizard monster). With a little research I discovered that it was directed by Maasaki Tezuka, who actually helmed a bunch of Godzilla movies, which explains a lot. The way scenes are shot and framed is very similar to some Godzilla movies. The use of miniatures and often cheesy looking effects also bring to mind the sort of ridiculous space-aged technologies they’d bring out in Godzilla movies. Only here they’re mixed with feudal Japan-styled sets and costumes. It’s a pretty fun mix.

It also feels as though it was adapted from a Michael Crichton novel. To be more specific, at first glance it has a very similar set-up to Timeline, the 1999 Michael Crichton-penned novel/2003 Richard Donner-directed film where historians used an experimental machine and were transported hundreds of years back in time to France during the Hundred Years War where they had to stop history from being changed. While one might naturally assume Samurai Commando is a rip-off, the truth is stranger: apparently Samurai Commando predates Timeline by being based on a manga/film from the seventies (starring Sonny Chiba no less!).

As a mixture of genres, it does pretty well. The time travel stuff is mostly just set-up and to give a ticking clock element to the film (they’ve only got three days to save the present and return home). It doesn’t dwell on it too much and never gets bogged down in it. The military stuff is fun (there are so many Godzilla-esque establishing shots of tanks, APCs and military formations – only with Samurai!). One thing that might be a little odd is the Samurai drama and historical aspects of the film and the characters in general. They’re almost all one-dimensional, though the actors are certainly game (nobody is slumming here) – they just don’t have that much to them. The film clips along at a great pace, but the trade-off is that it doesn’t spend much time developing characters. Not that it really feels like it needs it – this is a fun little movie that does exactly what it sets out to do.

It’s full of anachronisms, which is part of the fun really. Matoba is dressed completely in traditional Japanese garb, but still has his military watch on. Seeing Samurai run around with machine guns or wearing improvised ghillie suits is a lot of fun, as is the mixing of military action with old-school Samurai drama. Even the look and overall feel have their own charm, and the effects, as goofy and dated as they can look (the occasional CGI is pretty bad), add to the overall silliness.

Samurai Commando is probably more grounded than a movie with that title deserves to be. They really didn’t need to put in as much effort as they did, but what they’ve done is pretty good.

R100

I watch a lot of Asian cinema. I’m not entirely sure why, and it’s reaching the level of a compulsion, but something fascinates me about the cinematic output of Asia, from the Chinese chop-socky flicks of the seventies, the ghost/curse-heavy Japanese horror scene of the early 00s, dark and depressing South Korean thrillers, Thailand’s ridiculous and oft-silly action flicks, Hong Kong’s kung-fu movies and Indonesia’s recent breakout of brutal action films. I find it all very interesting, though there are some genres I just never know what to expect from. While I’ve grown very familiar with Japanese horror films, Yakuza flicks, Samurai dramas and live-action Manga adaptations, there is one genre that continues to baffle me: Japanese comedy. I know the comedy genre is a big one, and highly subjective, but I’ve never been able to get a handle on any of the Japanese comedies I’ve seen. They’re all just so…strange? Weird? Absurd? I don’t even know how I’d characterise them.

Thus we get to R100, an exceptionally weird Japanese comedy that starts out as a risqué dramedy before becoming something vastly different. R100 is sort of amazing, especially if you go in with no prior knowledge or expectations (meaning reading the previous sentence effectively spoiled the ufn). Actually, maybe having a pre-conceived notion of what the film will be like might make its surprises even more impactful. It certainly tricks you into thinking you’ve got it figured out before it suddenly switches gears on you. In that way it’s similar to a vastly different Japanese film, Takashi Miike’s psycho-thriller ‘Audition’. That movie lulls you into a false sense of security in its first half, playing out like an ordinary drama before things get dark and twisted. R100 is vaguely like that, in that the first half eases you into a state of comfort where you think you’ve got the movie figured out, and then it does everything possible to go against any logical expectations you might have.

Takafumi is an honest, hard-working furniture salesman who lives an ordinary, drab life devoid of excitement. His wife has been in a coma for several years and he raises his young son in the small apartment where they live. Takafumi decides to try and spice up his life by joining the mysterious and secretive Club Bondage, an eccentric and exclusive S+M club with a peculiar contract: no ‘play’ happens at the club itself, and instead he will have a series of ‘dates’ with a variety of dominatrix at public places where he’ll be humiliated and beaten in various ways. The contract lasts for one year and cannot be cancelled. At first Takafumi enjoys it – the excitement brings some much-needed joy and unpredictability into his life, and helps him get through his otherwise depressing and monotonous day-to-day routine. But soon the S+M play starts to intrude into the rest of his life as the dominatrix begin to target his professional life and his family too. And then things get weird.

R100 is a movie that wilfully defies your expectations by first playing exactly to them. The early dramedy is played as earnestly as possible (with some exceptions). Initially, you really feel bad for Takafumi in his ordinary day-to-day life. Perpetually wearing the same drab suit every time, powerless to save his wife and doing his best to raise his son, you feel sorry for him. And then, when things start to get more dangerous and dark (and silly), you feel for him even more. By the end though, things have moved beyond such matters. R100’s turns are baffling and bizarre, but never boring. Part of the film’s success is that it can change gears so quickly and drastically while remaining very funny and extremely watchable.

The film generally has a dreary, almost colourless filter on almost everything. Rooms rarely vary in colour from any variation of grey, light brown or off-white. This starts to fade a little in the latter part of the movie, but for the most part the film matches the drab, joyless, ordinary life Takafumi lives. There are some visual quirks though, particularly when the dominatrix get involved. Whenever Takafumi is reaching some sort of ecstasy, his face is distorted as his eyes turn black, his cheeks puff up and ephemeral ripples emanate from his head. It’s a peculiar visual image, one that gets repeated throughout and is often used as a comedic punchline. Another great source of humour is the fun poked at the normally uptight, overly polite and professional Japanese people themselves:  whenever he’s being beaten or humiliated in public, everybody around awkwardly averts their eyes and tries to go about their business as though it’s not happening at all.

Initially the film manages the thin line between drama and comedy quite well, especially when letting the comedy gently segue into borderline horror. A sombre walk home down the street after Takafumi visits his comatose wife is sad, until it’s punctuated by a leather-clad woman appearing from out of nowhere to kick the shit out of him. Horror movie sting sounds begin to herald the appearance of dominatrix. It manages to remain funny even when it seems to go unexpectedly dark, before it takes a sharp, off-road turn into weirdness. By the final third the film has evolved (or maybe devolved) into something completely different. It’s impossible to go into without spoiling it, but things get ridiculous. Whether this is good or bad will depend on your own tastes, but I enjoyed it.

More than anything else, R100 caught me by surprise. I was so sure early on that I knew exactly what it was and where it was going, but it purposefully swerved away from all of that. I still have absolutely no handle on Japanese comedy (I might understand even less now) but I had a lot of fun watching R100.