Lone Samurai

Shipwrecked on an unknown island, a samurai finds himself alone against a tribe of very hungry cannibals.

Lone Samurai is the result of co-production between Indonesia, Portugal, Japan, and the United States, with much of the shooting taking place in Indonesia, and I was reminded that I had it in my queue after recently watching the film, Orang Ikan, another "samurai stranded on a deserted island" movie.

But this time... instead of the film centering on a samurai versus a fish man, this one is about a samurai versus a bunch of cannibals.

Sounds great!

“In the autumn of 1274... Kublai Khan attempted an invasion of Japan, when a massive typhoon struck down his Mongolian fleet. Several years later, Khan returned. On August 15th, 1281, as the fleet readied itself in Hakata Bay, small bands of samurai took to sea, a suicide mission with one goal in mind… kill as many as possible. At the same time, another typhoon moved in, crushing Khan’s second attempt. It was a blessing, another gift from the gods. The storms were given a name… Kamikaze.”

This is how Riku ends up on an unknown island, he was fighting in the tight confines of a Mongolian ship against the Khan's warriors as the seas raged, and then, beneath the calm skies of the next morning, he finds himself still alive, but wounded and bloody and all alone on a sandy beach...

Beset by visions of his children and wife–who might be dead, or may just be back in Japan, it's hard to tell, but being as he doesn't know where he is, or how he will get home, it basically amounts to the same thing–Riku wanders around the island. He trudges through its forests and valleys, finding a broken katana along the way, and eventually ending up at a waterfall. Believing himself stranded and alone, and seeing no other option, he plans to kill himself, but at the last moment, he looks up at the island's lone mountain, envisioning it as the towering heights of Mount Fuji.

He decides to kill himself properly.

Gathering wood, and some charcoal to scratch haikus into the rocks along the way as he climbs the mountainside, Riku ascends to the foggy peak. There, he builds a torii gate, and settles in for the traditional seppuku ritual.

He is interrupted when a crazy-looking guy comes out of the fog and throws a rock at his head, knocking him out.

Upon waking, Riku realizes that he has been captured by a cannibals, and that he is slated to be the guest of honor at the night's feast. Luckily, his kids come to him in a vision, and Riku is just so proud of his boys, he decides to show them how proud he is... by vowing to take 50 heads in their honor.

Which he then does.

I enjoyed Lone Samurai overall, but it is a film that is both exactly what I expected it to be, and also not what I was expecting at all.

The opening credits of Lone Samurai, as we get our opening context information, is a samurai stumbling about the hold of an obviously storm-tossed ship, cutting down soldiers left and right. The next half hour or so of the film is Riku wandering around the island, writing haikus on rocks, preparing for his ritual, and hiking up the mountain for a good place to stab himself in the stomach and then cut open his own belly, which let's be honest here... is there really a "good" place for that? After that, the rest of the film is Riku killing cannibals. The fight kind of travels, starting out in the forest, where there's some fun traps and the classic snatching people out of the fog followed by wet sounds, and some good bow and arrow action too, but it ends up on a beach, with Riku standing there, alone, cutting down wave after wave of "Redshirt" cannibals, followed by a handful of the more specialized "Boss" kind of cannibals, until finally it's just him and King Cannibal. The fights are awesome, which makes sense, as they were choreographed by some of the same people who worked on the film, The Raid, but...

Because Riku rarely seems to have much of an issue taking all these guys out, the end fight on the beach very quickly loses tension, and drags a little bit.

Just a little bit, but still...

Also, the tonal shift between the two main parts, the preparation for the suicide and the taking of the 50 heads, is a little rough. It almost feels as if there were two different intents driving the creation of this film, with one believing the film to be a hallucinatory arthouse, nearly silent introspective character piece, and the other, a very straightforward action adventure film. In the end, it's fine, but I bet that fans of the former might not stick around through the first part, and fans of the first part may not stick around through the second part.

On top of that, it’s a little hard to see Riku as the hero of the film, when he is also an unavoidably obvious metaphor for Japan’s long history of brutal colonialism. It's hard not to miss the somewhat problematic optics here, as this is a "civilized" hero in "civilized" clothes, wielding "civilized" steel against a gaggle of screaming, tongues-out, mud-covered barbarians–all of whom really fucking loooooove being cannibals, like... a whole bunch–who fight with sticks and bones, while generally not wearing any pants.

But all that having been said, it's 95 minutes long, and it's mostly action, so it's good enough for what it is. Like I said, the fights are pretty fun.

Thumbs up.