Sengoku Movies

[Valeriu_history]

Hi ! I wan't to see some good Sengoku movies in the style of Gladiator or Kingdom of Heaven.
Some recommendations please.

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

Kagemusha
Seven Samurai
Rashomon
Ran

Heaven & Earth

[BullGod]

Not really in the style you've mentioned (No big battles) but I enjoyed Shogun very much. It's a 80's series based on James Clavell's novel. Almost as good as the book.

[Stellarnight]

I double Money's suggestion. Kagemusha is a masterpiece involving the fall of the Takeda. Seven Samurai is more of a examination of the less glorious parts of samurai life.

If you are expanding your choices to Edo era movies, the 47 Ronin movie that was made in the 1970s (i think) is pretty good along with Twilight Samurai. But if you are considering big battles, then whatever Money says is pretty good.

@Bullgod. I felt the novel was alot better. Maybe i just disappointed that the TV series did not turn out as i imagined But if you have not read the novel, then i think the TV series is pretty good but it doesnt cover like half of the novel. Some things were changed or omitted. So grab the novel. It is worth it

[BullGod]

@Bullgod. I felt the novel was alot better. Maybe i just disappointed that the TV series did not turn out as i imagined But if you have not read the novel, then i think the TV series is pretty good but it doesnt cover like half of the novel. Some things were changed or omitted. So grab the novel. It is worth it

I've read it. As a rule adaptation is worse then original, and it's hard to find a movie better than a book it's based on. But this one wasn't bad imo

[gavincolee]

I double Money's suggestion.

[Erwin Rommel]

Check the youtube vids in these thread.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=568943

Nothing but battles.

Sure its from a taiga drama. Lol I just remembered, the guy portraying Takeda Shingen in Ten To Chi also played as Tokugawa Ieyasu in Aoi Tokugawa Sandai.

He really has a distinct voice not to mention I love his expressions. So unlike the others around him deadpan. Well perks of being a daimyo and all.

[Man o' War]

All the above.

I'd also recommend reading Shogun, it's a masterpiece based on Tokugawa and the little known Will Adams even though it purports to be fiction.

If you can get the mini series I'd also recommend that. I had all of that uncut on VHS video back in the day, it must have been 10 or 12 hours long.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Adams_(sailor)

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

Kagemusha is about the fall of the Takeda clan. It starts off with Takeda Shingen and his brother (who happens to look exactly like him) are talking to a captured bandit who looks just like Takeda Shingen. They decide to use him as Shingen's double but Shingen gets killed after a siege against the Tokugawa. They use the bandit (Kagemusha) to pretend to be Shingen in order to confuse Nobunaga and Ieyasu. Katsuyori is not happy that Kagemusha gets to be Shingen and even scolds Katsuyori at a clan meeting. Katsuyori ignores Kagemusha and attacks Takatenjin and takes the fort. Kagemusha mounts Shingen's wild stallion but is knocked off and everyone discovers that Kagemusha is not Shingen. Shingen's generals and brother say good bye to Kagemusha. We then cut forward a year to when Nobunaga discovers that Shingen is dead since the Takeda finally announces it. Then we got to the Battle of Nagashino where Kagemusha follows and joins the Takeda and you know what happens at that battle. The End, in all there are 2 sieges and Nagashino, it has great dialogue and story line with some epic battles.

Ran is a fictional story about some brothers and a father which fight each other and other clans. It is apparently a what if, in which what if Mori Motonari's sons were actually evil instead of good. But the story is very fictional since not even the clans are real.

Seven Samurai and Rashomon are both about a group of samurai who battle for survival. These four movies are directed by Akira Kurosawa and you could probably find a tonne of other samurai duel films that were made by Kurosawa, but only Ran and Kagemusha have the huge battles.

Heaven & Earth was a film from 1990 (not by Akira Kurosawa) about the Early life of Uesugi Kenshin and how he battled Takeda Shingen; the film ends at the Fourth Battle of Kawanakajima and has that as the main battle but also has a couple of duels in which Kenshin fights some samurai.

[Puglife]

Not a Sengoku movie, but a Bakumatsu movie (Fall of the Samurai period). Shinsengumi: Assassins of Honor is a Toshiro Mifune film about Kondo Isami and the formation and fall of the Shinsengumi. It's very historically accurate for a film, and does a much better job than The Last Samurai of portraying the real issues that led to the modernization of Japan. It takes you through the weakness of the later Tokugawa Shogunate and the upheaval caused by the arrival of the Black Ships. It also shows the speed at which old alliances shifted as it became clear that the old ways were dying. Best of all it gives an actual Japanese perspective on the "fall of the samurai", and shows that they were not theromanticized charicatures you see in the Tom Cruise film.

As a plus it depicts Red and White Bear units in all their costumed glory!

[Lord Oda Nobunaga]

Toshiro Mifune movies are good, he was my favourite Samurai in Seven Samurai. His No Dachi was so deadly until he got shot at the end.