This is a sweeping samurai
adventure tale full of action, romance, death and defiance. It begins with
an epic attack on a castle and ends with two little people who have somehow
managed to survive starting over again as the world swirls around them. In
between is a myriad of plots and sub-plots running into each other like the
tornado at the end of the film. The Whirlwind. This is directed by Hiroshi
Inagaki who worked for most of his career at Toho specializing in period
films with many samurai films among them. He directed the Miyamoto Musashi
trilogy. Twice. In the early 1940s and then again in the 1950s with Toshirô
Mifune. This film is all over the place and it might have made sense to cut
out a few of the sub-plots to narrow the focus but they are all good.
It begins on the last day of the battle for Osaka Castle in 1615. The loss
of the castle was the end of the Toyotomi Clan and the last resistance to
the Tokugawa Shogunate. The film though takes an interesting angle on this
not bothering really with the fates of the head of the clan but instead on
a few of the common low status samurai who have fought on the Toyotomi side.
As the castle begins to fall the men are all deciding what to do - escape,
fight to the end or commit hara-kiri. One soldier says to the cook "You want
us to eat before we commit hari-kiri?". It is chaos with small fights going
on all over. Inside the castle the Toyotomi men are raping the women and
then killing themselves. One such woman is Princess Kikusato (Yoshiko Kuga)
who yells out to her sister Kozato (Yuriko Hoshi - Mothra vs Godzilla) to
get away. As she does though a retainer who is dying hands over the young
heir Lord Kunimatsu to her and tells her to take him to safety. Or kill herself
and him.
As she does two Iga ninjas jump in and take the baby with Kozato running
after them. They run into two low-level samurai - Jubei and Kyunosuke
- who kill one of the ninjas and get the Lord back. The escaping ninja promises
revenge. Jubei (Kôshirô Matsumoto), Kyunosuke (Yôsuke Natsuki)
and their fellow soldier Shuri (Makoto Satô) all end up going in different
directions but fate brings them together later on. Shuri who wanted to die
fighting survives and becomes a serial killer, Kyunosuke becomes a successful
merchant and Jubei who was about to commit hari-kari decides to help Kozato
get the Lord to safety. But there are no safe places - the Tokugawa are everywhere
looking for any remnants of their enemy and especially looking for the young
Lord.
The two of them are helped by a mysterious man they meet on the road wearing
one of those basket hats hiding his face. When he later takes it off it is
Toshirô Mifune - Lord Akashi who has his own story - as does the nun
where Kozato finds refuge as does Kikusato who becomes a wandering prostitute
as does the female ninja who can't decide between killing Jubei or having
his child. She is played by my latest favorite, Kumi Mizuno. Inagaki isn't
entirely successful in pulling all these threads together and making this
cohesive but it is shot beautifully, has some great characters, always has
something going on or going wrong and has some excellent action. There is
no profundity here - just an adventure tale like the Perils of Pauline.
