It ain't Kurosawa (or even Hideo Gosha), but "Shogun's Ninja" wasn't aimed at that sort of audience. This film is a wacky, blood-spurting, action-packed feast for the eyes, and on its own terms it works beautifully. While reference is made to real historical figures and events, the emphasis is on over-the-top fighting (mostly with weapons, but there's the occasional empty-hand confrontation, too). The tone of the film is completely unreal: it may look like feudal Japan, but the setting is actually some alternate dimension in which fighters can do everything but fly, where warring ninja clans wage their battles in the treetops of lush enchanted forests, and where it doesn't seem even remotely odd when Hiroyuki Sanada, grieving over the deaths of his comrades, suddenly breaks into a torch-twirling interpretive dance. This kind of unbridled goofiness would become commonplace in action films of the '80s, and in "Shogun's Ninja" you can see the new, extravagant aesthetic taking shape as the decade began.
Sanada is a credible hero, Chiba mostly plays it straight as the villain (just as he had the previous year in Gosha's "Hunter in the Dark"), and Etsuko Shihomi is her usual winsome, martially astute self. Six and a half stars.
Sanada is a credible hero, Chiba mostly plays it straight as the villain (just as he had the previous year in Gosha's "Hunter in the Dark"), and Etsuko Shihomi is her usual winsome, martially astute self. Six and a half stars.