Director Yûji Shimomura’s story of Crazy Samurai 400 x 1 is nothing more than a tale of revenge. In this film, taking place in the year 1604, Miyamoto Musashi (Tak Sakaguchi) attacked the Yoshioka family at their dojo and defeated their master, Seijūrō and his younger brother Denshichirō in two duels. To honor and save their reputation, the Yoshioka clan decides to fight Musashi in the name of vengeance. Poor Musashi must defeat 100 members of their family and 300 additional samurai warriors.
In the vein of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope, Crazy Samurai x 400 is known for a one shot/ no edit fight scene that lasts for over 70 minutes. I felt that the one-shot sequence was a nice artistic touch by Shimomura, but the overall choreography was lacking, and the non-stop swordfights was getting tedious as the samurai clan easily falls victim to Musashi in the same exact way, appearing not to have learned anything from their fallen comrades. They come charging with their swords above their hands and Musashi slashes them in the guts, allowing for unconvincing CGI gore. It’s like they couldn’t figure out not to attack with your sword above your head and were easy pickings. This long scene also reminded me of various games where suddenly the enemies just continue to pop up out of nowhere.
Well Go USA releases Crazy Samurai 400 x 1 on Blu-ray. The audio and video quality are excellent. The image after the opening scene which was a tad blurry, is quite clear with rich details and deep textures to the outdoor landscape. The colors of the outfits on the characters are bold, but there tends to be a blueish hue to everything and overall, the color palette is on the cooler side.
The audio tracks for this release are Japanese: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and Japanese: Dolby Digital 2.0. I found both to be pleasing, with crisp and clear dialog and various action sounds (i.e. swordfights). I did prefer the 2.0 track as it had a lot more depth and was more robost.
There isn’t much in the way of extras other than a U.S. and an international trailer for the film.
Crazy Samurai 400 x 1 to me is a movie that die-hard fans of the genre will most likely enjoy more than casual fans who that might find the seventy-minute one-shot scene a bit dull. This is a film where action/fighting scenes can get a bit dull. The Blu-ray presentation for this film is satisfactory despite the lack of any supplemental material.
Crazy Samurai 400 x 1 aka Crazy Samurai Musashi
Director- Yûji Shimomura
Cast- Tak Sakaguchi, Kento Yamazaki, Yôsuke Saitô
Country of Origin- Japan
Distributor – Well Go Entertainment / Well Go USA
Number of Discs – 1
Reviewed by – David Steigman
Date-3/28/21