Gordon LYON

Kagemusha (shadow warrior) has great possibilities, but the movie is difficult to follow relative to earlier Kurosawa films. It is too long. For this I partially blame the editing--tedious battle scenes contribute little to moving the plot along or tying things together. A lot (!) seems to have been lost in translation. Perhaps an English voice-over in places would have helped fill in cultural gaps--to provide a bit more psychological "glue." The essential story thread seems slightly muddled: it is never clear whether the tale is mainly pursuing character development of the shadow warrior or reasons for the decline of the war lord's clan: attempting both is a tall order in the context of a foreign language film from a very unfamiliar culture.