I sometimes forgot how ubiquitous a director Akira Kurosawa was. While you can feel his influence in Hollywood productions, he obviously wasn’t as big of a deal in the USA as he was in his home country. Over in Japan, Kurosawa basically defined the modern blockbuster and helped launch the careers of many famous actors. He wasn’t ever stuck on one genre, but his name became synonymous with the jidaigeki genre, or “period piece,” and often had a focus on samurai stories. The most famous of those films? Seven Samurai.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen Seven Samurai get remade and iterated on over the years. As I’ve gone through both Japanese and Hong Kong cinema history, the number of movies that have riffed on Kurosawa’s legendary work is outrageous. Things like Beach of the War Gods, 13 Assassins, The Magnificent Seven: people love the trope of a rag-tag group of heroes banding together to take on government oppression. It’s too bad that most of the knockoffs fail to understand why Kurosawa’s work was so engaging, opting to focus on action instead of character building.
That’s where Samurai Fury comes in. Under the original Japanese name of Muromachi Outsiders, this is yet another spin on Seven Samurai that attempts to update the classic for the modern age. While it actually would have been pretty neat to see it in a modern setting, Samurai Fury seemingly missed the point of Seven Samurai entirely. If I wanted to see a lame action remake of a tent-pole piece of Japanese cinema, I’d watch a Tarantino movie. At least that would have some hyper-violence in it.
Samurai Fury
Director: Yu Irie
Release Date: January 15, 2025 (Japan), July 22, 2025 (NYAFF)
Country: Japan
The general plot in Samurai Fury follows the tale of Hasuda Hyoe, here played by comedian Yo Oizumi in a rather commanding performance that breaks from his norm. Hyoe is under-reported in Japanese history, being mentioned by name only once in historical documents, but he is believed to have been the first ronin (which is a masterless samurai) to lead a rebellion. The narrative is adapted from writer Ryosuke Kakine’s novel, titled Muromachi Burai, and it tells of how Hyoe assembled a motley crew of farmers, peasants, and starving citizens to rise up against the shogunate to combat inflated loan rates and general desperation. Japan during the Muromachi period was in a dire state, which the set design gets across here.
Now, at first, Samurai Fury is actually centered around a misfit bandit that Hyoe encounters named Saizo (Kento Nagao). Having previously worked for debt collectors until the shogunate’s personal security team ransacked them, Saizo is a boy with strong spirit and no discipline. He shows aptitude with the staff, but can’t quite seem to swing it straight enough to be effective in battle. After bargaining with security chief Doken (Shinichi Tsutsumi), Hyoe takes Saizo under his wing and begins to train him.
For the first hour of the movie, the stakes are relatively small-scale, and the film builds out the relationship between Hyoe and Saizo. In typical old-school samurai film fashion, Hyoe is something of a harsh sensei who is eager to strike Saizo when needed and often speaks in riddles to him. Still, Hyoe cares for his new pupil and warns him of the dangers of walking the path of the samurai. Saizo casts aside his fears, so Hyoe entrusts him to another master to hone his combat prowess.
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It’s hard to get a grip on what Samurai Fury is doing in these opening moments because the tone is all over the place. At one point, Hyoe cuts through a toll booth with reckless abandon (and copious amounts of CGI) to instill a lesson for Saizo. No passage should be taxed by the government, as all humans deserve to roam the land. At the next, Hyoe is ribbing Saizo for being clumsy while the score shifts into a goofier tone. There’s no true central antagonist to the story here, and while the conflict would be Saizo’s skills growing over time, it’s never made clear why Hyoe took an interest in him.
Peppered through this are Hyoe’s interactions with different villages, who are either fighting off bandits or dealing with looming starvation. Director Yu Irie very much wants to make a statement about how corrupt the government is, but doesn’t hang this story on a central antagonist. The closest we get is with Doken, who has a past with Hyoe, where the two were idealistic rebels. At some point, money corrupted Doken, and while he isn’t entirely ruthless, he’s acting in his own interests. I figured there would be some kind of showdown between Saizo and Doken, seeing as how Doken was the one who eventually captured him, but no. That small scale that gave Samurai Fury some intimacy goes out the window in the second half as the actual historical part of his film kicks into gear.
Much like Takashi Miike’s 13 Assassins, Samurai Fury is a film of two distinct halves. Part one, as I’ll call it, is the character-building side that kind of fails to portray why anyone is all that important in the grand scheme of things. Saizo does become stronger and even beats up some guys, which leads to him gathering disciples of his own, but it feels rushed considering the second half of the film flips the script entirely. This isn’t a successful flip like the aforementioned Miike film, but almost a change as if two different projects were written and only half finished.
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For Part two of the film, Samurai Fury shifts into Seven Samurai mode and we kept a half-baked tale of overthrowing the government that occasionally has some cool visuals and fights, but is really more confusing than anything. Considering there is no strong antagonist, I wasn’t sure exactly what I was supposed to be rooting for or against. It’s not hard to disagree with Hyoe’s desire to give power to the masses, but when his motives are never made clear and the story keeps flashing between different perspectives, it never coalesces into an enjoyable whole.
So many new characters get introduced in the second half that by the time the big battle starts, I mostly lost interest. At points, I enjoyed what Samurai Fury was doing because I love a good character-based drama. Saizo’s journey of self-discovery may be clichéd, but it was solid due to a great performance from Nagao. In general, I think the acting is all very good across the board, though I’m not as convinced by the goofy outfits. Even still, clichés exist for a reason, so I couldn’t knock the movie for that.
It really is just that Samurai Fury never settles on a particular tone that it wants to convey. It’s also not particularly interesting as a war film, with most of the action being shot with shaky cam and some low-quality CG. Saizo does get one scene where he wipes out groups of samurai in a single-take -though I’m pretty sure it’s all stitch cut-, but for the most part, the brawls aren’t gripping in the slightest. There’s just too much mayhem going on with not enough clarity to it all.
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Interestingly, I’ve seen this film compared to last year’s 11 Rebels for its fragmented storytelling and sloppy execution. The thought did cross my mind when watching, as I had recently seen that film. 11 Rebels has production problems of its own, but both films fail at honing in on any specific style. That is the ultimate downfall of Samurai Fury. The film is competent in certain aspects and great in others, but it’s just not consistent.
When the credits rolled, there was nothing about Samurai Fury that felt surprising enough for me to call it a good movie. There was also nothing particularly awful about it for me to say it was bad. This is a fairly run-of-the-mill action film that Japan loves to pump out. The allure of remaking Seven Samurai for a new generation is strong, so I don’t blame Irie for attempting that. Next time, just make sure to figure out what you want the movie to be beyond a simple outline.
