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Title: G.I. Samurai - The Sonny Chiba Collection (2005)
Format: DVD
Score:
Starring: *
Director: Not available
Rating: Unrated
Runtime: 127 minutes
Hits: 103
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Review of G.I. Samurai - The Sonny Chiba Collection

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Comments for G.I. Samurai - The Sonny Chiba Collection

• Posted on 2007-04-03
  Amusing...for the most part.
  
  G.I. Samurai has to be a guilty pleasure.
  I found myself laughing more at the bad acting and worse script than anything. If you can believe Sonny Chiba leading a bunch of actors who have never seen a day of actual military service, then you can believe this mess of a film. If you can believe half the stuff these so-called 'soldiers' do back in the Sengoku, then you need to seriously crack a history book and get educated.
  
  I found the 'stopped watches' and the fact that Venus was postioned differently in the sky to be an excellent way of having passed from the Modern day into the Sengoku period. What really killed the illusion was the cheesy special effects to convey that. The music was, at best, inappropriate most all throughout the film. I also couldn't fathom the two or three rape scenes [one would have been very ample]. Also to see Uesugi Kenshin laughing like an idiot on drugs stretches things out of the realm of the possible. I was rooting for the tank, helicopter, half-track and all the other paraphenalia of these 'soldiers' to break down or get destroyed simply to end the misery of this film. The period costumes for the Uesugi and Takeda armies were, from what I saw, mostly well done.
  By the way- a lone man of comparatively no-name able to challenge a Daimyo like Takeda Shingen, then take the man's head? I'd have to think Takeda's Hatamoto would have made human sashimi out of him and Shingen wouldn't have wasted the breath on this idiot.
  G.I. Samurai could have succeeded with a better script, better acting and a more believable plot. Then again, it would seriously trash the comedic value of this whole affair.
  
  G.I Samurai is so bad that it'll leave you wincing and laughing at the same time.
  
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• Posted on 2006-09-03
  A very good movie !
  
  It's a old movie, but you don't see it.
  Good actors, very good story, nice costumes.
  Too bad it's not well know in France.
  
  No regret at all !
  
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• Posted on 2006-08-31
  The greatest tanks vs. samurais movie ever made!
  
  Pop quiz: you're a part of the modern armed forces in peacetime on routine manoeuvres and you find yourself thrown back in time with a chance to change history. What do you do? Well, if you're a Hollywood studio, you change the Japanese G.I.s in G.I. Samurai (aka Timeslip) to the crew of an American aircraft carrier, have them debate stopping the attack on Pearl Harbour for 90 minutes and then go home and hope that no-one reminds you that Japan did it first and with more balls in 1979 with this Sonny Chiba movie. But unlike its Hollywood counterpart The Final Countdown, this sees its premise through: thrown back 400 years into the Japanese feudal wars, its peacetime soldiers decide that their best hope of getting back lies in provoking history by trying to change it by joining with a warlord to conquer the country - cue lots of tank and helicopter vs. samurai action, including a very impressive unrelenting 25 minute battle sequence featuring a cast of thousands inflicting serious damage on each other. And yes, there are decapitations.
  
  Of course, things don't go as planned, and even superior firepower doesn't stand up as well as hoped to thousands of soldiers. Even before that, the soldiers are falling out with each other into those who want to go home, those who want to go to war and those who want to rape and pillage for the Hell of it.
  
  Impressively directed and surprisingly well thought through, the soft rock and country and western songs are sometimes a distraction, especially when they feature English lyrics sung by Japanese singers who audibly can't pronounce the words let alone speak the language, but it's a forgivable flaw in a surprisingly good sci-fi actioner.
  
  
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• Posted on 2006-08-06
  yu will be unhappy if you buy this thinking it's gonna be the best action movie ever with sonny chiba ripping people's limbs off
  
  Sonny Chiba and his whole troop(around 40 soldiers altogether) are somehow warped back into time 400 years. First thing they experience is an army pouring arrows down onto them. They begin to realize that they may have gone back in time when they see what people are wearing and meet the general. Being the fun loving guy that he is, the general comes right up and asks Chiba if he can handle that gun they were shooting at him. Chiba kindly obliges and makes sure this guy will be his friend.
  
  From here the movie kind of drags on for a while but I have to say that this is different than any Chiba movie I have seen before. While you think it is gonna get super boring like Ninja Wars, they actually take the time in this mvoie to develop the characters so that when someone dies or betrays the troop, you will actually feel something. And recognizing family members is a huge thing in this movie. Many of the soldiers give up and decide to just live it out in ancient times(the warrign period). The others think that if they change history by winning a war then they will have to be warped back into time. By the end the director realizes he has to wrap things up and the ending is a bit deeper than you may think but I too would have liked to know the real ending, becasue I bet it was just a bit more exciting than this.
  
  This movie is certainly not for everybody, I am surprised to say that this is a really good "movie". Plenty of great action sequences, but too many guns. So I ask you, if you were brought back in time with a whole bunch of guns during a time when there was not a single day with no fighting going on, what would you do?
  
  The dvd is from the distributor Adness is very good. Not widescreened like it says on the box but is in a very good 16:9 format. Picture is a bit washed out but really no flaws at all. Sound quality is good and the music itself is just weird. If you have seen Shogun's Ninja and Ninja Wars, then you know what type of music to expect, though in this movie it almost makes sense.
  
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• Posted on 2006-06-16
  Love=War
  
  ahem, perhaps you didn't read the plot synopsis? I simply can't see how anyone with the mindset to spend money on this could possibly regret it.
  
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