Sword of the Stranger - Sutorenjia: Mukô hadan

[David]

So, as most people who know me will realise, I reccomend some really stupid things for people to watch." Violence Hero: Riki-Oh" could be said to be one of those things but the great thing about that manga and live action film is that while the plot and its characters are completely ridiculous, it's entertaining but not in the way its author intended it to be.

Sword of the Stranger on the other hand, is not the kind of thing you would watch for unintentional comedy, in fact it's quite a serious film and badass. Sadly, because I reccomend to many silly things like the aforementioned Riki-Oh, people just laugh at me and call me all sorts of profane names when I try reccomend this film to them so I might as well try here!

The film itself is set in a Feudal era of Japan where a young boy flees with his dog from a Buddhist temple that has been set alight by the Chinese Ming who wish to capture the boy for an insane ritual that they claim to the Emporer of China, will allow them to make an elixir of immortality, just add the blood of a chosen child that has been slain at a precise time on a precise day. Of course, the boy doesn't want to be part of that and initially doesn't even realise the Chinese army want him for that, but he's instructed to travel to another Buddhist temple for safety, early on the boy unwittingly meets up with a nameless wandering samurai who mysteriously does not draw his sword and has it intentionally tied into the scabbard to prevent himself from withdrawing the blade by accident.

The film is basically about that wandering samurai helping the boy to reach his goal, that's it. But what a ride the film is.

The characters may not be that original but I can forgive it for having some amazing fight scenes and intriguing dialogue to break it up, this is one of those films you'll definitely want to catch in high definition as the artwork on some of the backgrounds is stunning.

I'd say the only thing people may not like about the film is the level of violence, while the main character doesn't draw his sword for his role in fights, the other characters have no such problem with chopping people up at all, perhaps the most gruesome scenes are showcased at the end of the film but they don't linger on the bloodshed too much.

If you want to watch a film that is full of some amazing sword battles and general badass things going on then you can't go wrong with his film at all, we won't see another one like it for a while but, if you're still unconvinced at how good the film is, you might want to listen to this review (you might want to use the timecodes they list on the site to skip to it) as they do a far better job of describing it than I ever will do.

The only other thing I could really add to this is to mention that sword battles in general are not my cup of tea yet I loved every minute of this film, it was that good.