SHOGUN (1980) ** For a movie it looks a lot like a best-selling novel, which translates something like "it's not necessarily great, but probably not awful." Richard Chamberlain receives a golden shower from a Samurai, gets thrown in various jails, engages in a number of fights with various weapons, matches wits with the clergy, eats raw fish ravenously...all without messing up his hair or beard much. In fact his coiffure never looks so attended as when he gets off a ship after an extended voyage. Primitive blow drying and all that, I suppose. The best scene is when Frankie Sakai welcomes him to the village: I don't know if Sakai studied John Belushi, or Belushi Sakai, but without question there was an exchange of information and technique. Unfortunately the campy overtones are unintended (at least by Jerry London, I have the feeling Sakai knew what he was doing) and ignored, and to make matters worse I couldn't always tell exactly what was going on. I think that it was because James Clavell assured his employees that everyone had already read the book (which is almost true, but I didn't), but it may have been that I occasionally caught myself dozing off in the midst of the proliferation of rationales for suicide. Toshirô Mifune adds as much authenticity to the proceedings as he can, but it's a bit like drinking saki with burgers.
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