Title: Uzumasa Limelight
Country: Japan
Rating: 4
Seiichi Kamiyama
is one of those highly trained and yet borderline uncredited extras in Japanese
sword-fighting films that gets bloodily dispatched, sometimes dramatically and
sometimes offhandedly, by the top-billed actor. After the last great chanbara
TV series is canceled, Seiichi's rather specialized skills are no longer
needed, and he loses part of his pride and most of his purpose. Disliked by the
company's new producer, he rarely gets roles even after the genre is revived
with a younger, handsomer and trendier cast. Eventually Seiichi finds a calling
teaching Satsuki, an ambitious and heartfelt young lady, how to stage-fight.
She will have her day in the limelight.
The concept looks great on paper. Casting
Seizo Fukumoto, a real-life oft-killed 'Thug #2' and 'Samurai guard #4' in many
films from the 1970s, is also inspired. But everything else isn't. The
direction is flat and over-earnest. The look is bland and overlit. The story
beats are predictable to the point of mechanic, making it easy to get bored
since you know where a scene is heading before it’s halfway through. The young
actors are not very good, just like the young actors they are portraying. This
is a film that is supposed to be feel-good, but it too often it doesn't earn
it.
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