One of the frequent complaints lodged against the Japanese film industry is that producers are reluctant to bankroll anything that isn¡¯t based on an existing novel, manga or TV series. There¡¯s a lot of truth in the criticism, but not every screen adaptation of an existing property is a product of bet-hedging.
For audacity alone, this movie version of Kou Machida¡¯s ¡°Punk Samurai Slash Down¡± is worth applauding. As books go, the musician-turned-author¡¯s 2004 novel wasn¡¯t exactly ¡°Finnegans Wake,¡± but most producers would have concluded that the surrealistic period romp was unfilmable. If its verbose, wildly anachronistic dialogue and narrative nonsequiturs weren¡¯t enough, there was also the climax, in which a samurai clan battles thousands of religious fanatics with help from an army of monkeys.
It¡¯s not a safe bet, in other words, but Gakuryu Ishii¡¯s film would seem to have plenty stacked in its favor. The director¡¯s ¡°Crazy Thunder Road¡± and ¡°Burst City¡± ¡ª made back when he was still calling himself Sogo ¡ª are punk cinema classics, while 2000¡¯s ¡°Gojoe¡± proved he could handle the demands of a samurai epic. And if anyone was up to the task of adapting Machida¡¯s novel, it would be screenwriter Kankuro Kudo, who took an equally anarchic approach to period conventions with his 2005 directorial debut, ¡°Yaji and Kita: The Midnight Pilgrims.¡±
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