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Ran (Masterworks Edition) Actors: Tatsuya Nakadai, Akira Terao, Jinpachi Nezu, Daisuke Ryu Director: Akira Kurosawa Number of Items: 1 Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen Format: Color, Widescreen, Dolby Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Running Time: 160 minutes Studio: Wellspring Media, In Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Region Code: 1 Product Group: DVD Release Date: 2003-04-15 Buy from Amazon |
 "AKIRA **RAN** INTO GEORGE"A.Kurosawa is Japan's George Lucas. They are both great epic storytellers and have both made samuraï serials ; yet they both have an aggravating tendency for "fusion culture". By fusion culture I mean an artificial blending of cultures that embodies the hope of a cosmopolitan betterment for humankind. Examples : Star Wars, Star Trek TNG, Afro-Celt Sound System, Esperanto, europeen sushi, Ran, etc. Visualy : scenary beautiful, thow special effects for blood **actual ketchup** suck big time! Better to see "The Last Samuraï" if you want realism for combat. Soud : has no dubbing whatsoever! Interesting wind effects for tempest. Dialogue : you'll find a few interesting proverbs in the subtitles, such as "the hen pecks the rooster and makes him crow". Hardly any text at all, images talk for themselves. Acting : Lear's buying his stairway to heaven, the Fool looks like a cross-dresser, all the other major roles are convincing. Story : has major cuts (in an effort to reduce lengh) that riddle the play with non-sense. Edmund, Shakespear's most notorious villain besides Iago, is cut out. The Gloucester/Edgar duo is fusioned with the Lear/Fool duo, causing the Fool to stay after the tempest, even to survive Lear's death. Much better to see sir Laurence Olivier's King Lear to understand the play.  "Love, hate relationship with RAN"I am not particularly a fan of Japanese films, I think it is second rate to Chinese movies. Ran however is the exception. I like this movie, I think the movie was very meaningful. I like how the movie started off with the father(King Hidetora)getting pissed off at his son Saburo for talking back bluntly to him with little regard for the father's feelings. Then later on Hidetora ironically finds out that Saburo was the best and most loyal of his 3 sons. The father later realizes his great mistake for banishing Saburo. So the whole theme of this movie was about loyalty and who you can and shouldn't trust. This movie was very meaningful to me because it depicts the true human nature of a person and how one thing such as greed or wealth can quickly bring out that person's true nature. This movie was very sad and disheartening because Hidetora later realized that even the people you loved and trusted most above all others will some day stab you in the back. What a life to live without love from anyone. I feel greatly for Hidetora and I hope that that kind of thing doesn't happen to me. A very moving story that will pull at your heart strings and make you think twice about who you can really trust in this world. I kind of had some dislike for this movie because at some parts, it just dragged on and on. The worst thing about this movie was that during the many battle scenes, when the soldiers got killed, the blood was an awfully fake color. It wasn't a deep red color like real blood, it was of a bright orangey-red color, like someone spilled paint all over them. This unrealistic blood color ruined the whole effect of the movie and just made me realize that I was watching a movie after all. All the realism quickly went away. I would recommend that you watch it because it is a great story, but I don't know if it's such a great movie to keep because it drags on at certain parts and also there was not much of an indepth storyline, it was just about loyalty, that's about it, not much else is involved to beef up the script.  "Amazing"This movie has a mythological aspect to it, which I suppose comes from the experiences of the Great Lord Hidetora wandering the volcanic countryside in his varying levels of madness. This to me is the main part of the story, while in the background the destruction wrought by Taro's former wife brings down everything that Hidetora had built. This shows how quickly an empire built upon the bodies of one's enemies can come crashing down, especially if you leave vengeful people alive. Hidetora's early ruthlessness as a conquering Daiymo comes back to haunt him at every turn, now that he has been abandoned by most of his sons and peers. (Which Hidetora set in motion himself by relinquishing power to his eldest son) It is only the honest love of his youngest son Saburo that brings Hidetora back from madness, and even this is temporary, as once again his legacy of blood comes back to seek final revenge in the form of an assasin's bullet that kills Saburo. Hidetora then dies of a heart attack caused by the ultimate suffering he has endured for weeks without end. It is perhaps a deserved fate for Hidetora, but Saburo is the real tragic figure here, having done nothing but honor his father even when shunned by him early in the story. The film itself shows excellent and breathtaking examples of the Senkogu(sp?) period of war in Japan, with castle assaults and a small field-battle towards the end of the film. (curiously absent is the lack of actual sword-to-spear combat scenes, most depicted combat in the film involves arquebus troops and cavalry) The costumes and sets are excellent, no cgi here, just live actors in suits of armor and hundreds of horses. My only major complaint is the rather obvious 'red' of the fake blood used for the battle scenes, and the way it was splashed onto the bodies depicted throughout the film, which wasn't a very good attempt on the part of the film crew to be realistic. It's the story that matters in this film though. I have not seen the Masterworks edition, but the standard DVD has a slightly poor picture quality for a film from the 80's, with some color issues (faded coloring). Hopefully the Masterworks edition is of better quality, but my gripes are only minor and the standard DVD is satisfying enough. "Far From Kurosawa's Best, Overrated"Yes, it was the 50s classic Japanese director Akira Kurosawa coming back to make a final color epic. But unfortunately, magic doesn't always strike the second time around. This film is just flat; it shows you how much Toshiro Mifune really meant to Kurasawa. Kurosawa's great weakness was his misogyny, an apparently utter disdain or fear of females. He seemed to seek out stories where evil women or unfaithful women existed as the curse of man. Here at his advanced age, Kurosawa seems to have felt free to come completely out of the closet, living vicariously through the character of the feminized court jester. Even at this mature stage of his life, Kurosawa shows an amount of understanding of and sympathy for the plight of women that one would expect to find in a in a confused teenage boy. If you want to experience the classic Japanese films era at its apex, watch Seven Samurai, Hidden Fortress, Rashomon, Sansho the Bailiff, & Tokyo Story. This film is OK, but for me it sullens the memory of the films of that great era.  "Finally, an edition that looks like it should"So much has been written about this film and its' importance I am going to pass over reviewing the movie and say that we all know it is one of the best films ever. Most previous releases of this film are just terrible. They have ghosting, color smearing, loss of detail, etc. until they are just about unwatchable. This edition looks great! I have that sickeningly expensive limited edition set from last year and I would have to say that this is at least as good a print and perhaps better. This is a great buy! |
