Sengoku Jieitai
Entry updated 10 February 2017. Tagged: Film.
Film (1981; vt Time Slip). Toho. Directed by Kosei Saito. Written by Toshio Kaneda, based on Sengoku Jieitai ["Civil War Self-Defence Force"] (1974) by Ryō Hanmura. Cast includes Sonny Chiba, Iasao Natsuki, Jana Okada and Miyuki Ono. 139 minutes, cut to 100 minutes. Colour.
Based on one of Ryō Hanmura's intelligent novels, which use sf reinterpretations to comment on Japanese history, this tells of a troop of modern Japanese soldiers caught in a Timeslip and transported back to sixteenth-century conflicts in the same area between local warlords. The troop's commander, unlike the agonized ship's captain in The Final Countdown (1980), has no hesitation in trying to change history so that he and his men might somehow be returned to their own time, and sets about conquering Japan. This action adventure plays its sf riffs confidently, and shows visual flair in the numerous gory battle scenes in which few soldiers (with modern Technology) face many samurai (with very sharp swords). [PN]
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