Gojoe (2000)

Following a war with the defeated Genji clan, the Heike clan have sought to bring peace to the land, but there is none outside the city of Kyoto where soldiers are being brutally killed by what is described as a demon. Joined by a grave robber and sword smith, a fighting monk with a dark past answers a call to find and slay this demon.

Gritty drama, epic comic book violence and a strong dose of ancient myth collide in Gojoe, a jidai geki with lush imagery and tremendous potential not fully realized. It’s the product of writer and director Sogo Ishii, one of Japan’s better modern filmmakers who possess a gift for creating enticing visuals regardless of the genre he works in.

For this action film set in ancient Japan, Ishii brought the best filmmaking gear that Hollywood had to offer at the time into the remaining wilds of Japan to shoot dazzling scenes on par with Michael Mann’s brilliant work in The Last of the Mohicans (1992). Green forests, grimy villages and ornate governmental interiors are rendered in such a fashion as to take on personalities of their own. This is ably matched with bold costuming befitting the era, and dynamic camera pans and creative editing that blends reality and fantasy to the point where it is difficult to distinguish one from the other. This all compliments a story that becomes a hyper-realistic allegory of mythic conflict.

Gojoe is essentially a story of two swordsmen who have crossed the boundary between man and demon to become near-otherworldly rivals fated to clash. In this sense, the film bears similarities to the swordplay films of fellow Japanese director Ryuhei Kitamura who has dabbled with titanic and supernatural swordplay rivalries in Versus, Aragami and Sky High. One swordsman is Benkei, a stern warrior monk played to perfection by Daisuke Ryu, who is haunted by his violent past and seeks absolution and enlightenment in the only way he knows how, by fighting. The other is Shanao (Tadanobu Asano), the next in line to rule the Genji Clan. Along with his younger brother, Shanao has been allowed to live by his enemies and has grown up sword in hand with the sole purpose of destroying them. His mission begins with the gradual killing of 1,000 Heike soldiers by his own sword near the Gojoe Bridge. Seeing him as a serious threat, the Heike court marshals their forces, but they are no match for his unnatural skill. Benkei arrives to team up with a scavenger who was once a great sword smith in order to find and kill Shanao. Caught up in this struggle are the people of a poor village outside Kyoto whose gruff leader (Masakatsu Funaki) bears an old grudge against Benkei. As the two warriors draw closer, Benkei suffers disillusionment in his faith and Shanao discards his fight against the Heike to wage an all-out war against Buddhism itself. In essence, both men embrace their inner demon in order to gather the strength and resolve necessary to fight each other in a climatic duel to the death.

Ishii makes an interesting choice in setting by placing this fight during the relatively-peaceful Heian era where the main contention is between rival Genji and Heike clans. It’s an era of strong contrasts that Ishii factors into his movie. On one hand there is the upper society full of art and immaculate dress. On the other, there is the lower caste, mud-caked peasants struggling to get by in a world ruled by superstition. This primitive angle is reinforced by a guttural soundtrack highlighted by ritualistic drumming and screeching electric guitar riffs that work surprisingly well.

The action is plentiful and suitably violent with frequent decapitations and sprays of blood. Yet Ishii favors very tight editing which usually works from an artistic angle, but is just as often frustratingly difficult to follow. This works best when the “demon” is rampaging through a small army of samurai. On several occasions, Shanao and his two companions slice their way through these men in a whirl of combative confusion where action is partially obscured by the environment and shaky camera work. This same technique does not work so well during the climatic duel where semi-surreal artistic expression overrides sound fight choreography. Weapons repeatedly clash in the dark with explosive sparks and the sound of shotgun blasts as both combatants furiously swing at one another. It becomes some cosmic-sized battle where two celestial bodies collide in a brilliant explosion. I’d take a good old-fashioned sword fight where skill and strategy is emphasized over this glitzy mess of over-edited combat any day.

The real shame regarding Gojoe is that Ishii obviously has the ability to create fantastic period scenes, but this ability gets overrun by ill-defined action choreography and artsy elements that hinder as much as they help the narrative. I generally love the world he creates here and the characters that populate it are interesting, but remain underdeveloped and somewhat distant considering the long running time. As is, Gojoe is a solid action film that contains adequate swordplay, visuals worth seeing and an edgy story lightly sprinkled with fantasy.